Developer Image & Form’s acclaimed RPG card-battler SteamWorld Quest will, after its successful launch on Switch last month, be heading to Steam on 31st May.
SteamWorld Quest: The Hand of Gilgamech, to give it its full name, marks yet another dramatic departure for Image & Form. And its card-based action plops another perfectly formed feather in the Steamworld series’ ever-growing genre cap, joining previous instalments’ takes on tower defence (SteamWorld Tower Defense), excavation-based platforming (SteamWorld Dig 1 and 2), and turn-based strategy (SteamWorld Heist).
SteamWorld Quest returns to the series’ ever-delightful, robot-occupied universe, albeit one that’s a little more classically fantasy in tone this time around, introducing deadly dragons, brave knights, and more. However, the real star of the show is the meticulously designed deck-based battle system underpinning Quest’s story-driven RPG elements.
Essentially, combatants must play a sequence of three cards from their steadily expanding deck each round, which are then resolved in the same sequence prior to the enemy’s turn. This alone forces a degree of strategic forethought, but true mastery demands that players consider a card’s steam cost, the related combos that can help them maximise a hand, and chains, which come into play as different cards are strung together.
“SteamWorld Quest covers all its bases. But it also has a surprising pacing that I grew to love, offering fewer random battles than expected, but always against meaty foes,” said Christian Donlan in his Recommended review, “Every fight can feel a bit like a boss here, and the health system encourages you to take the challenge seriously”.
“After Slay the Spire I thought I had the only card battling RPG I needed for the time being. But I should never bet against the SteamWorld team, and so it proved here,” he concluded, “Wit, warmth, smart mechanics and a surprising challenge all make SteamWorld Quest a delight”.
SteamWorld Quest’s 31st May Steam release will support PC, Mac, and Linux.
