SteamWorld Heist

A wonderful little game with lot's of charm, really fun and engaging turn-based combat that's pretty much 2D XCom. It really caught me off how much I enjoyed SteamWorld Heist as I typically don't really enjoy these tactics type games, but it really clicked with me. What I think made this so much more fun than other tactics games for me (besides the great art style, writing and world) is how you aim your shots in a 2D space. It makes combat so much more engaging and in the latter half of the game things can get pretty challenging. Overall solid 8/10 game. HATS off to you, SteamWorld Heist.

Fun turn-based strategy , where It's entirely your fault if you miss your shots which is great.

I like the game a lot. The combo of tactics, gear, and skill shots make game play fun. Unlocks and level ups make progression feel good too. Humor is the icing on the cake. All in all just my kind of game.

⚔️ Gameplay ⚔️
☐ Just bad
☐ Repetitive
☑ Fun
☑ Casual
☑ Challenging
☐ epic

📘 Story 📘
☐ none
☐ Bad
☐ Alright
☑ Good (really good story arch with cool looks at the past games but you can play without the previous games)
☐ Fantastic

✨ Graphics ✨
☐ Bad
☐ Alright
☐ Good
☑ Beautiful (really detailed environments, yet is light on your GPU)
☐ Breathtaking

🎶 Music 🎵
☐ Bad
☐ Regular
☐ Good
☐ Relaxing
☑ Epic (Really awesome steampunk-garbage like music, sets an awesome atmosphere)
☐ Repetitive

☠️ Difficulty ☠️
☐ Boring
☐ Easy
☑ Regular (you better get your geometry books out for this one)
☐ Hard
☐ Unfair

👾 Bugs 👾
☐ Unplayable
☐ very Bugy
☐ bugy
☐ Speed-run/cheaty bugs
☑ bug free

⏳ Game time / Length ⌛
☐ Tiny (0 - 3 hours)
☐ Short (5 - 10 hours)
☑ Average (10 - 20 hours)
☐ Long (30-50 hours)
☐ Grindy (60 -100 hours)
☐ One Piece (100+ hours)

💸 Buying Price 💸
☑ Fair [Full Price]
☐ Pricy [wait for Sale]
☐ Unfair [borrow it from a friend]
☐ Don't even Bother

❎ Should you Buy? ✅
☐ Please Don't
☐ Not really
☑ Yes
☐ Absolutely
☐ Must-Have

🙂My 𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 Opinion🙃
This is a really cool game with an interesting story and an epic soundtrack, Really a fine alternative to those boring Idle adventure games (cof cof *steam world quest* cof cof)
I would really recommend buying it even if you haven't played the other two games or if you missed the giveaway

I would love to recommend the game, but someone thought that putting countdown in game, where enemies are RNG placed, is good idea.
On harder difficulty game can be impossible just because you have bad luck with enemy placing.
And thats a no-no for me.

I recommend this game as I have enjoyed it immensely.

I have played SteamWorld Heist in short, intense bursts during the COVID-19 lockdowns, as well as its prequels, boarding spaceships and leading my robotic corsair crew through gun battles against crazy enemies where bullets, rockets, laser beams and plasma bolts fly left and right; gunslinging in SteamWorld Heist is all the fun.

I am Ambrax, an old biker.

A fun game that had enough tactical depth to keep me interested but not so much that I'd spend an hour agonising over every turn or feel that it was too much after a mentally draining day.

Top game. Great art style, SFX, music and gameplay.

Also great for people with a hat fetish.

I usually don't leave reviews but I had for this one. This game was sitting in my wish list for almost 2 years. I finally got to pick up for only 2 USD. I finished it in about 30 hours on experienced difficulty and I enjoyed every minute of this game. It's really fun platform strategy game that will taste your skills. with enough class characters you can mix your party to keep you enjoying the game. most mission you only can deployed 3 characters but some missions 2 or 4 depending on the length of the mission. it is slow and boring in the beginning but it gets fun when you advance in the story and of course become more challenging. I'm glad I picked up this game and I hope they make a second game.

What a great game this is. After finishing SteamWorld Dig 1 & 2, I've decided to continue the story of SteamWorld universe. I knew this is going to be a bit different from the prequels in terms of gameplay since it's more like a Worms with its turn-based combat. And I really liked the change from all that digging in previous games. And I really wasn't disappointed. The story was typical one, a bunch of heroes against evil forces. But the thing that kept me chained to this gem (in a good way) was its gameplay, sound and animation. The shooting was really fun and impactful so was the clanky sound of dismembered bots etc.

I've spent 61 hours in game, about 4 hours was me being afk, so I'd say 57 hours of me playing it. It took me this much since I went for all the golden stars and all the loot in the game, oh and I maxed all the characters. I highly recommend. Will probably replay it in the future.

Lovely indie game. Takes around 15 hours to beat, up to 20-30 to beat twice with new game plus on max difficulty while beating all levels, replaying some levels to level up your crew and then some time to get all the achievements.

Graphics are simple but good looking (2d, hand-drawn). Music is lively and fun. Fighting is not hard, but takes a bit getting used to. The game is somewhat hard at the start, but gets easier as you get used to strategies and characters, level up and get better gear.

Overall, I loved it.

Great game. If you enjoy turn-based tactics games, such as XCOM, Darkest Dungeon, and Worms, then this one should be right up your alley. You handle a crew of robot mercenaries who take on missions from other robots in order to grow their earnings (in water galons) and reputation. And as you get better, you take on bigger threats. The game is broken down into 3 acts, each one with its own story arc, all of which are interconnected, and it can take you around 15-20 hours to beat them all on a single playthrough. Though story here mostly acts as a supplement to the gameplay.

The combat is quite addictive and satisfying. You get to manually aim your shots, so it's not really dependent on RNG but rather your skill. However, some tactical planning is also beneficial, because you need to position your characters in spots where they can have a clear shot at the enemy and at the same time to remain protected behind cover, so some degree of planning several moves ahead really helps here. You start off with just 2 playable crew members, but throughout the campaign, you pick up several others, and each one has its own strengths, weaknesses, weapon preferences, and special abilities, so you get to pick your team and their equipment at the start of each mission. Missions are all set aboard semi-randomly-generated spaceships, where your objectives are either to destroy all enemies aboard, to grab all the loot, or to destroy a specific target of interest (such as a power supply).

There are 5 difficulty levels to choose from at the start, and you can switch them at any point in your campaign (though this does affect your achievements). The Experienced difficulty rating (3rd out of 5) is quite well-balanced for anyone familiar with turn-based combat games, though there were some unexpected difficulty spikes in places, particularly when act end bosses were involved. I personally also found enemies in the final 3rd act to be more cheap than anything, such as teleporting behind you, shooting you, and then teleporting away, making the utility of cover virtually pointless, or the inclusion (and overuse at times, *coughfinalbosscough*) of energy shields, which protect all enemies in an area from any damage unless you first destroy the source of those shields, which most times is somewhere behind enemy lines.

There is a very charming art style, if you haven't noticed yet. The levels are very beautiful and fun to navigate through, and character designs are overall awesome. And the music is also great. Aside from standard instrumental tracks, the game also features a lot of the vocal music by a band called Steam Powered Giraffe. In fact, they're represented in the game as musician robots, often playing their music in various space bars, which I thought was a very nice touch. And voice acting, well, whenever any of your team members speak, there's a robo-sounding gibberish noise that plays with a speech bubble, which is a somewhat unique approach and fits with the overall vibe of the game.

Overall, very entertaining, high quality, and polished indie game. No doubt one of the better indies out there and one that can last you a long time because there's plenty of potential to still find it fun on multiple playthroughs.

This game is a great 2D Turn-based shooter. The story is fun and continues from the Steamworld dig 1 and 2. The mechanics are fun and the actual story is long.

People complain that this game get repetitive fast. But those people are wrong. If you take the time to check, they only have 1-4 hours played. Of course it's easy if you are at the easiest difficulty and you just rush in one-shot headshot everyone and take barely any damage. But like most game, when you crank the difficulty up, it forces you to developpe a new playstyle. Take cover, retreat, ricochet bullets off walls, shoot enemies in the legs to cripple, ect.

Make no mistake that this game is excellent and definitly worth it, especially when it is so discounted as it is now.

Overview

Difficulty

Combat and Ricochet

Verdict

The Good & Bad review

General Description of the game:
> Battles are turn based, its like 2D version of XCOM
> Loot based, got different weapons such as sniper, shotgun, etc.
> Requires basic level of aiming
> Player can shot down enemies' hat and collect it
> Can shot robots into pieces ;)
> Teamate does not have perm death

The Good
+ No time limit (You can grind level if you cannot pass through). This allows me to play without having the pressure to rush to fight the boss
+ Unlike XCOM, you can control the aim of the gun. Added a layer of challenges to player


The Bad
- Tiny problem but every time when I leave the game inside my own ship, the game won't save. If I did something like inventory management work before I leave the game, I may need to do that again when I start the game next time. (Developer Patrick Baitman has replied a workaround for this situation: "A workaround is to dock with a bar afterwards, which makes it save.")
- The game may get repeatitive
- Difficulty does not improve the AI, they only get better damage and health instead of becoming smarter

Verdict
- Its satisifying to see your plan executed perfectly and killed every enemies
- This is like a casual version of XCOM
- Hat system is fun

Yea this game is fantastic...

Steamworld Heist is a turn-based, tactical action game with heavy influence from games like XCOM. I'd even go as far as to say that this game plays like XCOM if it played on a 2D plane. It is extremely well made and the mechanics all completment themselves nicely.

So the game's main quirk is manually aiming your unit's weapons. This wouldn't be such a huge thing if your bullets didn't richochet like fucking rubber bullets. Due to this you can pull of some crazy ass trick shots, those of which saved may ass many times. Your first time through you'll probably find yourself in quite a few sticky situations on the battlefield, so being able to pull of these trickshots will be crucial to your crew survivng the scuffle.

All in all it's a very rewarding game; you're almost always sorting through new loot and gaining more water, which acts as the game's currency and the combat can be very satisfying if you set up your shots correctly.

I would reccommend this game at full price WITH the "The Outsider" DLC, as it adds a few extra missions, a party member, and new items. Image & Form are great devs and they deserve the money.

This one's a gem.
- The turn-based style lets you play at your own pace
- Excellent smooth graphics
- Each part of your fallen enemy tumbles across the floor of the stage
- Many hats available so you can customize your posse and make them fabulous
- You can collect hats by shooting them off enemies' heads
- Get great guns and other useful swag from your raids
- Lovable characters
- Level-up-able characters
- Real-time skill of aiming in turn-based strategy
- Has an old western feel in futuristic outer-space
- Has a fun story
- Has good references
- Robots are cool
- Space is cool
- Pirates are cool
- Cowboys are cool
Conclusion: This game is awesome and could aptly be called "Space Robot Cowboy Pirates"

In the dry run between when the Nintendo 3DS came out and when the games started really rolling in, one neat indie game on their E-Shop took off: Steamworld Dig. It was a pretty simple Motherlode-style platformer, but it had charm and a satisfying gameplay loop. The only problem was its length, which was short enough to beat in just a few sessions. The game was successful, but rather than do a direct sequel, Image & Form decided to make one in a different genre altogether, a strategy RPG. That means you won't beat Steamworld Heist in just a few hours, and it also resulted in a fantastic game to me.

Heist is set a while after Dig, following the Earth exploding and its robot inhabitants moving into space on barges. You play as Captain Piper and her crew, who operate as space 'pirates', although you never steal from anyone who isn't also a pirate or evil in some other way, so they may as well just be bounty hunters or something. Pirate attacks in the outer regions of space have become more vicious later, and it's up to them to find out why, and make off with as much loot or hats as they can carry.

Combat is clearly inspired by X-COM: all the ladders, drops and cover are there as you might have seen them in Enemy Unknown/Within, but set in a 2D backdrop. Also like that game, you can move and shoot or use an item, or use your entire move dashing. The most unique wrinkle though, is that there is no RNG in Steamworld Heist, at least on your end. When you go to attack at range, you're allowed to freely aim your weapon, and spend as long as you want aiming the perfect shot. Your bots' don't have perfect stability, so the sights waver a bit, and there are things like ricochets to factor in, but if you hate when a 90 percent shot turns into a miss in X-COM or Fire Emblem, this might be the game for you.

That doesn't make the game easy, of course. Even your most bulky party members can't just tank fire, and it's safe to assume enemies will hit them if they're ever out in the open. Your team is made up of all unique party members, so they're not gone forever if they bite it, but that means they don't receive experience (which is doled out for fulfilling mission objectives rather than killing enemies), and your rating for the mission will drop. It's a good balance between encouraging you to be careful, but not punishing you horribly if something happens to go wrong. There are also multiple difficulties so you can fine-tune it however you like.

Despite being in just 2D Heist has a lot of tricks up its sleeve, such as enemies who only melee, ones with shields you have to flank, and ones who charge up piercing lasers. It's also able to replicate things from X-COM that work with it, like flanking (at least with two characters), and a running timer on some missions that will spawn extra reinforcements, keeping you from just turtling up. There are also some interesting boss battles, which X-COM doesn't really do.

Heist also has a DLC known as The Outsider, which adds another character and a couple more missions to each map (of which there are three, with different ships to invade and enemies to fight). It's not necessary by any means, but the extra crew member is interesting to use, and it has some useful, but not game-breaking items. I like that it's not cordoned off in its own little area, and it's only five dollars as well.

Overall, Steamworld Heist was a very pleasant surprise for me, and a huge step forward for the people behind it. Moving between genres can't be easy, but they produced something not just good, but a huge leap forward compared to their last game. If any of this sounds interesting to you I'd recommend picking it up now, and especially if it's on sale. Really looking forward to Image & Form's next game, whatever genre it happens to be.

My review comes after I have fully completed Steamworld Heist on 'Experienced' difficulty on my first playthrough.

I enjoyed every moment of this game and there is a variety of difficulty settings for more casual players or more harcore players.

This turn-based, skill-based, shooter game has little elements of RNG and the majority of outcomes is based on your strategy and skills. There is a good selection of members and guns to choose from that cater to different playing styles. Some are sharpshooters that get an aim-assist laser line, some are rocket launcher users, some are more skilled based (i.e. Sally can get additional shots if she kills an enemy and with 'mad dog' she can shoot forever until she doesn't kill an enemy in one turn) and others are more strategy based (i.e. Payroll has very high movement and gains double shot + bonus dmg when flanking so you move behind enemies and unleash hell on them).

The levels are mostly randomized to some degree and sometimes, but if you played certain levels 10+ times over (yea I did lol) you've gotten the idea what the general layout is going to be like.

The majority of the RNG comes from whether or not you crit an enemy, assuming you don't have 100% crit chance and sometimes when you do not crit and the enemy survives with 1 hp it kinda sucks.

There are weapon shops in-game but some of the best equipment I've obtained was RNG loot from finishing levels. Though not necessary to continue with the game it does make it much easier (i.e. Exoskeleton - +2 HP, +1 Mend +1 Melee..that is really nice for melee focused member like Billy).

The music and art-style is appropriate and both are enjoyable.

Game also offers NG+ if you want to start from the beginning, but keep your crew, level and gear. This gives the oppurtunity to play at a higher difficulty level..or lower if you wish.

The story was simple, and straightforward. Nothing spectacular about it, but really bad about it either.

------------
tl;dr
Gameplay - 2/2
Boss Fights - 1/1
Customization of Party - 2/2
Art and Music - 2/2
NG+ - 1/1
Story 1/2

Overall: 9/10. Highly Recommended

Very addictive game.

Cast of colorful characters, interesting-yet-simple gameplay, gorgeous handdrawn graphics, soundtrack by Steam Powered Giraffe, etc.

I do strongly recommend that game. Absolutely love it.

I am currently 10hrs in and got through about half of the game.

P.S. I totally nominated this for "Just 5 More Minutes" award, because it's that kind of game. Easy and addictive.

SteamWorld Heist is a really good game with high polish and great execution, but much like SteamWorld Dig it suffers from not enough depth and complexity. Lots of potential wasted here, IMO. Not to sound insulting, but Image & Form games often feel (to me) like one notch above games with mobile developement in mind. Overly simplified to a fault. When you build a game that begs to be compared and described as something like XCOM, you have the potential for tons of customization and sandbox-like creativity. Let me explain further.

When you reduce a tactical game down to 2D, you already lose a bit of strategy, which is fine - to a certain extent this was made up for by the brilliant bullet-bouncing/aiming system. Thats great, and beyond the superb graphics and music, thats about where the greatness ends. Leveling up could not be more simple - you have no choices, no skill tree, and have no options in bonuses you recieve. It might as well be non-existant. You gain power as you win, and therefore can fight stronger/more enemies. It's a rub.

At first the loot you find is interesting until you realize that guns aren't really that functionally different, and it's a simple numbers game (ie. Gun A has +1, and Gun B has +2, so Gun B it is). The weapon stats increase fairly linearly, so you don't get that awesome feeling of finding rare loot, or getting something early in the game. Another note about loot - at the end of every level you have to 'open' your loot by clicking on it, which is fun for a second, but after a couple hours it feels like a mobile game. Yawn.

The hat collection is cool, and I like how you can strategize to shoot them off of enemies heads to get them. Nice. Are they functional? I don't believe they are, but I could be wrong.

I find it frustrating to give SteamWorld Heist a negative review, because it is really awesome and is soooo close to achieving greatness. But alas, it is also so far. I want more. I want strategy like XCOM. Whether it would be more base-building elements, better equipment, character customization, etc. All of this is possible in this game. In fact, the hard part of building a brilliant combat system is done. I think we just need more bells-and-whistles.

Pros:
+Awesome addicting combat that rewards solid strategy a la XCOM
+Beautiful artwork, animation, and music
+Gotta love that SteamWorld universe
+Controls are tight regardless if you use keyboard and mouse or controller
+Hat collection is cool

Cons:
-Everything can be solved with money, and this is no exception; if the game were ten bucks, I could overlook a lot, but that's not the state of things, so:
-Overall things are too simple for an XCOM-like game; loot is boring and linear, character customization verges on something mobile (as does a few features), no base building elements, etc.

At the end of the day, considering all the DLC, SteamWorld Heist costs well over $20, which is quite steep for something so one-dimensional. Yes, the combat and artwork and music and atmosphere are brilliant, but after about 2-5 hours I think most people would find it repetitive and shallow.

Peace,

An original and well polished turn based strategy. It's not a particularly deep game but it's a well polished one and together those traits make it very approachable and easy to recommend to anyone.

Pros

• Approachable RPG. Health, Damage, and Move are the only stats.
  
• Manually aim your skills. Shots can bounce off walls and obstacles. Sniper characters and pull off some fun trick shots.
  
• Enjoyable soundtrack. I love the main theme.
  
• Difficulty effects reward. This goes a long way to removing most grind from the game. Just go back to an easier level and ramp up the difficulty.
  
• New Game+. Start with all characters at level 0 and keep all unlocked hats.
  
• Fully rebindable controls. Even supports rebinding controllers! WHY IS THIS NOT NOT A STANDARD FEATURE IN GAMES!
  
• Wonderful art style.
  

Cons

• Can't get the Steamworld Dig hat. On 3DS if you have Dig installed you can unlock a free hat. I really like this hat. I own Dig on Steam. It's installed. No hat. Very disappointed.
  
• Lacks and significant customization.
  
• Character progression is predetermined.
  
• There's a lot of overlap between the character's skills. I only actually used about five of the ten characters available.
  
• With some exceptions the 'Sharpshooter' class of weapons are the only ones that get laser sights.
  
• The soundtrack does not contain any of the combat or ambient music. Only the tavern songs.
  
[*]Some of the tavern songs are ehhhhh... They do a good job setting the mood in game though.

SUMMARY:
I couldn't put this down for about a week and really felt like I got my moneys worth. Considering I'm ADHD and have over 400 games in my library I feel like thats a rare thing for any game to accomplish these days. It held my attention and I'm writing a review which I never do, so ... give it a SHOT!

PROS:

Suprisingly fun and fulfilling gameplay.

Good progression curve.

Lots of fun weapons.

Characters with unique abilities.

Random map generation.

Hat collecting.

Charming graphics.

New game+ mode

CONS:

Could be a bit longer, with more weapons and chapters.

No oversized anime breasts on the female steambots.

After playing this two times through on the Nintendo 3DS, I now embarked on my third journey to this fantastic game. This time on the PC. And I am happy to report that this HD version is exactly how SteamWorld Heist is on the 3DS, only it looks a hell of a lot better. As it should!

Now then, the game itself. A turn based, "2D"esque game that has movement and cover mechanics much like one finds in XCOM. You can walk a certain distance, take cover, and then shoot. Depending on your weapon, for some weapons do not allow you to shoot after moving. In any case, you can also sprint and take cover, but that automatically takes away your ability to shoot. Much like in XCOM with certain soldier classes. Heist could also be described as inspired by Worms, just like the developers themselves state on the Steam store page. Certain things like grenades and rockets for example have a curved trajectory, much like in Worms games.

Plot of the game more or less picks up an unknown time after the events of SteamWorld Dig. It is not directly mentioned, but what you will find at the end of SteamWorld Dig is quite heavily tied to the plot of Heist as well. In any case, the steambots have taken off to space. They most likely took off to space before the Steamworld itself (aka, Earth) exploded, but now they are forced to stay in space. Farming moisture on the chunks of Steamworld that still orbit the planets core. They also share the space with another "race" of automatons, called the Royalists. Who are not steam driven automatons, but diesel driven. So you get this fantastic mixture of Steampunk and Dieselpunk in the first and second parts of the game.

You, dear player, play as the rogue captain Piper. And it is your task to gather a crew of steam driven (and if you also purchased the Outsider DLC, one of them is actually something else) automatons, Cowbots if you prefer, to help you bring a bit more freedom to the Outskirts. During the course of your travels, adventures and shooting, you will also find yourself suddenly involved in a devious plot that has more or less everything to do with why the planet went kaput and what was unleashed back then. In the end, it is your task to put an end to all of that nonsense so that honest and hard working Cowbots will have it a bit easier on the Outskirts.

The Soundtrack of the game is also rather splendid. It was made by the band Steam Powered Giraffe, who some of you might also know as being the ones behind Montana's theme song in Gearbox Softwares latest game, Battleborn. They themselves are steam driven automatons, so it was only fitting that they would make the soundtrack for this game. They also have ingame cameos, and not only can you hear their songs in the variety of space bars you will visit in SteamWorld Heist, but at times you can actually see them perform in said bars.

So. A TL;DR conclusion: A turn based strategy game with steamdriven automatons as the characters. Influenced by XCOM and Worms games. Gather a rag-tag crew from space bars, listen to lovely music while you are at it, and then go shoot some robots why won't you.

Oh and there are also hats. So many hats. Even more in the DLC. Speaking of which, I actually think I am still missing at least 3 hats from the 3DS version.