SteamWorld Heist (Hands-On) (PC) Preview

Forget about Rusty, the cute cowboy hat-wearing miner, the Wild Wild West-ish town of Tumbleton, and the world underneath it, because this quest takes place a few hundred years after the events of SteamWorld Dig, in a time when Steambots have finally managed to brave the cold, hostile highways of the cosmos. Meet Captain Piper, the - literally - tough-as-nails spaceship commander and protagonist of this steampunk story, who happens to have quite a difficult task at her iron hands; find water or kick the bucket, since, not only is H2O the most valuable substance in the robot-eat-robot universe of SteamWorld, but it's also unbelievably scarce.

The thing is, as promising as this setting might seem to be, none of it was included in the actual pre-release build that Cubed3 went hands-on with. Is that a bad thing, though? It depends. If a sample of a game is a mouth-watering one, it's all good. However, if it doesn't show enough, it's not - even if the actual full release is actually perfect. In what category does Heist fall into?

For starters, the only available level is very small, and will take approximately 10 minutes to complete it. In this small amount of time, gamers are introduced to the basic mechanics of this title, which, unlike SteamWorld Dig, is actually a two-dimensional TBS. This linear mission is pretty straightforward: just go from room to room and blast away anything that dares to stand in Piper's way, and, luckily, this short operation won't create any problems due to the flawless controls.

Each robot, ally, and foe alike, can move around, climb ladders, duck behind destroyable barrels, and, of course, try to fill "that guy over there" with some nice bullet holes - or go Rocky Balboa on his/her tin behind. To be honest, though, this turns out to be a somewhat plain experience. Nothing is broken, glitchy, or problematic, yet the things that can be done don't make this demo feel like a sample of the full game, but more like a sample of a sample. On a positive note, a thing that looks quite promising is the way the actual gunfights are being handled, since when a Steambot finally gets trigger-happy, the process of aiming isn't just a matter of placing a cursor above the opponent's head.

When in shooting mode, the player is in full control of what happens, and since the hand that holds the firearm constantly rocks up and down, good hand-eye coordination is needed. Each of the three available bots that can be controlled, however, don't behave the same. Seabrass has a powerful shotgun, Billy has an unstable Uzi that shoots multiple bullets, and Captain Piper is the sniper of the team, since she has a laser scope on her revolver. Finally, a feature, which will most likely be a major part of the final game, is how all bullets ricochet, and even though the available level doesn't let this mechanic shine as much as it should, it adds to the overall strategic aspect of SteamWorld Heist.

Besides the core gameplay mechanics, what else can be said about this little spacefaring adventure? Typical of Image & Form, the audio-visuals are awesome, with a level design that is very colourful and detailed, characters that have the charming simplicity of the robots from Futurama, and a nice assortment of sound effects on top of it all. In conclusion, apart from the fact that this experience was a microscopic fragment of the final product, there's not really much to complain about.