Anno meets Dungeon Keeper in the series’ 3D debut

Developer/publisher Thunderful Publishing (The Station)

Format PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series

Origin Release Sweden 2023

Our first question for Brjánn Sigurgeirsson, Thunderful co-founder and SteamWorld universe and franchise director, is simply, ‘What took you so long?’ SteamWorld games have turned up like buses every couple of years since 2010, but the most recent, SteamWorld Quest, was released some four years ago, in 2019. “It’s like we forgot one game in the middle somewhere, right?” Sigurgeirsson laughs.

Most of the team at Image & Form had been preoccupied making The Gunk, he adds: “But there’s a lot of stuff in the works.” SteamWorld Build is being developed by The Station, a studio that was purchased by Thunderful in 2020. So why isn’t Image & Form developing a new SteamWorld game? “Maybe they are,” Sigurgeirsson smiles.

But was he worried about putting Thunderful’s crown jewel in the hands of a newly purchased studio? “We were very confident that The Station could take a good IP and run with it, and do really, really excellent work,” Sigurgeirsson says. “That doesn’t nullify the risk. It’s risky because they hadn’t worked on it before. But – I don’t know how they did it – they pitched it to us, and very quickly they had really good material, like really interesting stuff. So I don’t think we ever had time to become nervous in that sense. I feel they didn’t put a foot wrong.”