Steamworld Heist
See kids? Geometry CAN be fun!
Turn-based strategy is a funny old genre, isn’t it? There you are, sporting your squad of roided out Gains Marines, their level 9 assault trooper with his shotgun in the enemy’s face and a smirk on his:
“‘95% chance to hit?’ BITCH PLEASE. I’m a professional. I’ve trained for this. I LIVE for this. Taking aliens apart is what I do. Now, watch this drive.”
He misses. Everybody dies. The aliens win. Randy Quaid died for nothing.
I get it. There has to be some way of representing skill/chance in these games, otherwise everything gets boring very, very quickly. But oh, man, is it frustrating when this kind of stuff happens, especially if it results in the permadeath of one or more experienced team members.
Step forward Steamworld Heist and its sublime solution: manual aiming. Make no mistake, while this game is held aloft on several strong pillars, this system is quite literally the game-changer. While it’s been attempted with varying degrees of success in the past (Valkyria Chronicles gave it a decent bash a few years back), never has it been applied with such commitment and finesse.
For a brief bit of context, Heist plays out on an incredibly pretty and colourful 2D plane, as you control a motley band of cantankerous pirates boarding procedurally-generated ships. You search for swag, complete objectives, then get to the exit, all while shooting and power-fisting your way through the enemy ranks.
Oh yeah, and you’re all robots. Powered by steam. In space.
Minute-to-minute, it works pretty much as you’d expect. You take it in turns to shift your crew, positioning for the perfect shot or sprinting for greater distance at the expense of an attack. Interestingly, the baddies don’t afford experience or loot, but will often spawn with increasing frequency the longer you remain on board, meaning they’re a resource to managed rather than an objective to be dealt with (though you will occasionally run into a ‘Kill 10 Rats’-style quest. Sigh). All mostly standard stuff when it comes to a TBS, and all applied in an accomplished and confident manner by devs Image & Form.
Aim down your pistol-sights, however, and that’s where things get really interesting. Rather than trotting out the old faithful of selecting a target and having a chance to hit based on your gear, character, and experience, you simply take full x and y-axis control of the shot’s trajectory. There’s a quiver to every character’s gun-arm, meaning there’s always a margin of error, but critically, that error will be yours and yours alone. You choose when to unleash your shot. Miss? It’s on your shiny, metal head.
It’s utterly liberating, and a mechanic that has to be experienced to be appreciated. The beauty of it is that the same percentage chance to hit is still in there. Eyeball to eyeball with the enemy? You’re not going to miss that. Take a shot from halfway across the ship? You can absolutely pop a cap in an android ass (better to go for the head though), but based on the distance, you’re way more likely to send your bullet ricocheting around the walls.
Yes: ricochets. The cream inside this wondrous gun bun. Pretty much every weapon with a bullet (grenade and rocket launchers pop up a bit later) can be bounced off every surface, which means precisely one thing: TRICKSHOTS! You think it’s satisfying to line up a straight shot from one side of the screen to the other? Try firing from the same distance, but bouncing it perfectly off three walls to land smack-bang between the cold, lifeless eyes of an entrenched droid scumbag. Sharpshooter-class firearms have laser-sights to aid these adrenalizing displays of gun-fu, but they’re perfectly possible (and encouraged) using standard pistols and rifles. Make those shots, which’d be handled via an invisible dice roll in most other games, and you’ll feel like the king of the god damn world. Without an ounce of hyperbole, I can’t remember the last time I physically jumped up and cheered so many times playing a game. It is fucking euphoric.
The rebels wielding those guns shouldn’t be forgotten, though. While you start off with just the breezy optimist Captain Piper and miserable old “sea” dog Sea Brass, you’ll recruit a varied bunch throughout your travels who each bring their own unique abilities to the table. These abilities are automatically unlocked as the team gain experience (doled out to each surviving participant at the end of a mission), providing you with a wide-range of powers to assist in overcoming each challenge.
While it’s a useful idea to keep everyone levelled to a reasonable degree (particularly on the higher difficulties), you’ll undoubtedly have your favourites. Once I found her, I never entered a mission without Sally: farm-girl, hick, and taker of many, many names. I love her. Her Kill Shot, (bestowing her one extra attack after destroying an enemy) would prove to be invaluable, especially when modified by the once-per-mission Mad Dog ability. This chains Kill Shot to a theoretically infinite degree; position her correctly, with a powerful enough gun, and she’ll gleefully rip through the villainous hordes as both adversary and comrade alike watch on with a horrified reverence. And don’t forget: every shot is aimed and fired by you.
The assortment of character abilities is important in keeping things fresh, as other aspects of Steamworld Heist don’t manage to keep things quite so interesting. While the enemy ships you board will have different coats of paint in acts 1, 2 and 3, the layouts lack variety and are rarely interesting after you’ve seen them once or twice. Procedural generation is of course achieved through the re-use of assets, but the trick is in hiding it well (see: The Swindle for a brilliant example of this). You’ll see chunks of level repeated here a little more often than you’d like. And, while the story and character chatter is dry, off-beat and reasonably funny, it’s entirely surplus to requirements and ultimately forgettable.
Less of an issue (and certainly not a fault of the game itself) is the time you’ll spend playing. My playthrough came in at a shade under 20 hours, which I’ll admit was longer than I expected. A single level, within which you’ll board one enemy vessel, will usually take you about 15–20 mins, but variations in size and difficulty mean you’re talking anything from 5 mins all the way up to 45. Once you start a mission, you’re locked into either completing it or being completely destroyed (safe to say one of those options is preferable to the other), with destruction carrying a hefty “reassembly” fee. This same fee applies if you abort a mission partway through, so at first glance, Heist looks rather unforgiving for we, The Time-Starved of this world.
But fret not. While it’s true that you’re committed to a mission, a handy autosave kicks in after every single turn, meaning you can quit the game entirely and be deposited right back where you were, mid-mission, upon your next boot-up. It begs the question of why anyone would ever use the abort option; why not just soldier on, get one of the crew home in one piece and reduce the fee? One for the masochists, I guess.
Steamworld Heist has been such a wonderful surprise. I bounced off the developer’s previous effort, the similarly-universed Steamworld Dig, deeming it a bit grindy, but they’ve really nailed it here. It’s tough and usually futile to reinvent the wheel, but they’ve shown turn-based strategy fans that there can be life beyond a dice roll. This is a solid, polished title garnished with an exceptionally well-designed and implemented mechanic that’s so successful, it becomes the whole game. The next time you’re playing a TBS and that 95% shot goes clanging off some nearby scenery, roll your eyes and think of Heist.
All hail the power of Steam.
