The key to making a compelling construction sim is ensuring players always have something to focus on, such as town planning and micromanaging citizens, or perhaps introducing something that requires intervention often. The fear of progress going awry when your back is turned can make an experience all the more addictive. The Station, developers of SteamWorld Build, have a clear understanding of this. The whole shebang is structured around flicking between four layers – above and deep below ground – which, eventually, all require your attention. Couple this with a strong premise and the allure of the SteamWorld brand, and it seems like a winning package.
The plot and premise here are both easy to grasp. You’re in charge of establishing a dusty mining town and ransacking the remaining resources of the nearby mines, all in the name of creating a rocket ship to escape the barren world in search of stronger prospects. A familiar robotic core, retrieved from a scrap pile, claims that the required ship parts are buried underground. The deeper you go, the more dangers come to light, gradually increasing the focus on combat.
To create a bustling town from scratch, locate the buried rocket parts, and eventually blast off is a task that takes around 10-15 hours, depending on how quickly you expand and explore.

It begins with a step-by-step tutorial, which also showcases shrewd button placement to a joypad set-up. I never found myself fumbling with the controls once here, making this a far cry from some other recent console simulators. Certain text is small, however, made worse by the decision to use white text on light green backgrounds for some notifications. Resources can be hard to distinguish too, especially once greyed out after becoming unavailable. With no text description, I often found myself cycling through building types and resource lists to try and identify specific icons.
Regardless, the tutorial is well-paced. You’re put in control of the town planning aspect for a good couple of hours, mastering what’s expected from thereon. Every resident has needs, and these start basic. Citizens can then be upgraded to engineers, and twice more beyond that – and all these upgrades see their list of needs greatly expand. They demand washing and service stations, saloons, sheriff outposts, burger bars, casinos, and more. If any one of these services isn’t close by, then you’ll be unable to make the vital upgrade from resident to scientist, etc. The default map is a little difficult to build within, restrictive on space when compared to other construction sims. It isn’t particularly clear if you’ve built too many of certain facilities either, such as cactus water farms, as there isn’t much in the way of economic guidance. Warehouses becoming full is your only clue.

A train line runs through the town, and it serves an important purpose; one that can get you out of a jam. It’s possible to set-up trades so that if you are short on a certain material, you can simply buy it or trade for something bountiful. Cash flows freely once the mine is established, and I often found myself throwing money at any shortages that arose. Just like the UK government.
Mining unlocks around 2 hours in, with the mining aspect recalling Dungeon Keeper (or the Dungeons series, to use a more modern reference.) Your interactions here are limited to highlighting surfaces to dig through while placing colour coded nondescript barracks for your miners, engineers, prospectors, and guards. Adding an armoury allows turrets to be placed, while the size of your workshop governs the number of refineries for dirty water, oil, and other resources mostly used in the town’s factories. There’s no direct control over your miners and guards – miners will simply dig, gather, and reinforce walls automatically. Guards meanwhile will merely dash over to any enemies that are discovered and attack. When I first encountered an enemy, the battle happened so quickly – in addition to taking place off-screen – that I wasn’t even sure what happened. Another time a worm-like enemy was wittering down my guards, but as notifications can’t be interacted with, I had to scout the entire map to find the pesky thing.
It’s easy to see why a lot of things are out of your control here; it’s all in the name of making SteamWorld Build easier to play, helping it appeal to a more casual audience. Thankfully, it still proves quite rewarding. Chests can be found that unlock perks for certain buildings, in addition to turning all guards into flamethrower troops. It’s possible to set-up conveyor belts and teleports too, maximising resource gathering potential. Being mostly automated reduces a lot of toil too, with miners and guards being replaced almost instantly from the pool of citizens above ground.

A lot of time is going to be spent underground, as the focus never shifts from finding buried rocket ship parts. Some require levers to be found first, focusing your miners to dig and explore almost the entirety of each map, while the bottom mining layer places rocket parts near hives that you’ll need to overcome with brute force. It definitely becomes more combat focused towards the end, with a lot of gold and resources being blown on turrets and guard barracks. The amount of combat notifications consequently increases tenfold, which is pretty aggravating.
Also towards the end, the requests from citizens to obtain 100% satisfaction are rather steep – the scientists in particular are a demanding bunch. The number of resources to focus on likewise eventually becomes overwhelming, with oil turned into all manner of other products. My town went from being neatly planned to quite scrappy, with not much room to plan creatively or freely. That said, there is a choice of maps when starting a game, along with a sandbox option.

There’s a lot to be said for SteamWorld Build being easy going. The citizens don’t revolt or move out if their demands aren’t being met; they’ll merrily plow on regardless. The 12 hours I spent with it before penning this review were mostly engaging, with the objective always clear, and new buildings unlocking upon reaching milestones. But when compared to other SteamWorld games, this one doesn’t feel quite as well thought out, being unrefined in certain areas and too basic in others.
While it’s visually appealing – with some buildings having novel touches, such as the casino with one-arm bandit reels on the roof – there isn’t all that much personality on display here either. Dialogue appears infrequently, and character models are diminutive. The town can be decorated with benches, lamps, and cacti, which may sound neat, but they insntatly become lost upon zooming out and don’t seem to serve any real purpose.
Although I wouldn’t call SteamWorld Build cozy and relaxed, it’s certainly quite casual – mostly at the hand of its rigid game design. I enjoyed My Time at Sandrock – another dusty, faux Wild West, construction sim – a lot more than this, but if you’re looking for a way to blow off some steam for a few evenings, there are worse ways out there. Just be warned that its minor flaws may eventually amalgamate into something more detrimental.
The Station’s SteamWorld Build is out now on all formats. Published by Thunderful.