The SteamWorld series began in 2010 as a tower defense game made exclusively for the Nintendo DSi, and since then it has grown to a total of six games in five different genres.in this week’s Hamburg Gaming Conference (pass GamesIndustry.biz), Thunderful co-founder and SteamWorld universe director Brjánn Sigurgeirsson explained why they switch between different game types like this.
He revealed that his studio (then known as Image & Form) had produced more than 60 educational and entertaining games as a developer-for-hire. The studio doesn’t want to do this anymore:
“We’re really tired of this. We’re afraid of making the same type of game over and over again. So we really want the freedom to make the game we want every time. Our entire future depends on SteamWorld Heist. If When that game was successful, it meant we’d proven our point and from that point on, we were essentially free to make any game we wanted.
Luckily, that paid off and the series has been known for never repeating itself ever since, and last year we got a city builder called SteamWorld Build. Unfortunately, it didn’t sell as well as expected, and traffic to new SteamWorld games has slowed significantly (the previous one was 2019’s SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech). So maybe the studio should try to give a sequel to the most popular game in this universe, but they still seem hell-bent on continuing to make something new:
“Who knows what the future of SteamWorld will look like? A robot dating sim? Or a racing game? Or a first-person shooter? What’s important is that we’re ready to lift the curse of making the same game over and over again. What we need to continue to do is make good games in this series. Recent news has it that SteamWorld Headhunter appears to have been cancelled, but we really hope Thunderful can get back on track with these lovely games again, no matter what genre that might be next time.
