As a big SteamWorld fan, the reveal for SteamWorld Heist 2 surprised me. For one thing, the SteamWorld series isn’t known for sequels. Other than SteamWorld Dig 2, the series has always jumped from genre to genre with each new entry, which is a huge part of its charm and appeal.
Secondly, with Thunderful’s layoffs and restructuring, and the lackluster sales of SteamWorld Build last year, I wasn’t sure the series would survive, and I certainly didn’t expect another entry so soon. But Thunderful Gothenburg is back at the helm with a sequel to the 2D tactics game, and after playing several hours of it this week, I’m so glad there’s more to look forward to.
SteamWorld Heist is admittedly not my favorite SteamWorld game. Its small cast of predefined characters didn’t offer the kind of strategic depth of tactical freedom I’m used to from this genre, and its procedurally generated maps made missions feel tedious and repetitive, especially in the back half. But Thunderful has tackled the shortcomings of Heist head-on, and has created something that feels like a true sequel: bigger, better, and deeper than the original in almost every way.
SteamWorld Heist 2 trades the original’s space pirate setting for an adventure on the high seas. The new crew led by Captain Leeway is twice the size of the original, each with their own unique abilities on the battlefield. Rather than lock each character to a specific role like the original, Heist 2 introduces a new job system that allows you to choose the individual specialties of each character.
There are six jobs, and any character can level them up. As you do, you’ll earn points to spend on upgrades. you may focus all your points into one job and make a character a hyper-specialized brawler, sniper, or engineer, or branch out into multiple jobs, spreading the upgrades out to cover more bases. The system seems flexible enough that, even with those six jobs, you can specialize a couple dozen characters to feel distinct.
To complement the new jobs, the gear system has been significantly updated too. Heist 2 features over a hundred guns and plenty of utility pieces that can be swapped out between missions as you fine-tune your team. Weapons define the usefulness of each character just as much as (if not more than) their jobs, and each weapon has a completely different function and feel. There is an overwhelming amount of customization here that the original Heist was lacking.
Even your submarine, which replaces the [whatever it was] from the first game, can be equipped with a variety of weapons and upgrades. Heist 2 features real-time exploration of the overworld where you can pilot the submarine and engage in nautical battles. The submarine automatically attacks enemies in range, like Vampire Survivors, but skirmishes are more often with just one or two enemy vessels rather than thousands of bats.
What entices me the most about Heist 2 is the fact that all of the missions have been handcrafted. There are still some procedural elements when it comes to the placement of things like treasure and interactables hidden around the mission spaces, but the bespoke nature of each mission has clearly given Thunderful a lot more creative freedom, and even early levels feel more purposeful as a result. With how much extra depth Heist 2 has, I expect it to be significantly longer than the original, so I hope there will be a lot more variety and creativity in the environments this time. So far, that seems to be the case.
The humor, style, and creative blending of genre always carries the SteamWorld series for me, and I’m excited that the studio wanted to give this ricochet-filled 2D tactics game another shot. SteamWorld Heist had a lot of untapped potential, and it feels like Heist 2 is finally tapping that well. Prepare for a crunchy team-building experience with lots of character-tuning and high-level tactical strategy, and nautical-themed robot puns. Lots and lots of robot puns.
