You aren’t the only one to notice, in fact I’d say it is intended, if only for nostalgia bait.
The trailer makes me think the surface layer is the typical “peaceful city builder” while the underground is the “survival city builder”, fighting off waves of enemies, etc.
Played a bit of the demo. Topside seems very Anno, albeit somewhat simplified, and with some UI annoyances that are presumably the result of being a first time city builder dev. Hopefully they still have time to fix those before release.
Edit: Underground is very DK so far. If they nail this, this could be my ideal game.
That was my thought. I was like “Could it be?!?!?!” Then I was totally confused.
Watching the dev trailer, I think they are hitting the mark on what some of you said. Anno-esque for the top layer and Dungeon Keeper for the lower level. Looks great!
OK, finished the demo. Super excited for this now. It’s basically Anno 2070, if instead of underwater cities, you had DK instead. No idea if they’ll be doing combat, however. The workers don’t seem to have as much personality as DK, sadly, but the interacting systems so far seem very cool.
That sounds really cool.
It felt a bit schizophrenic to me. I was getting a handle on the aboveground (which I agree feels like Anno) when they introduced the underground aspect. I will grant that it’s a demo and the tutorial could be a bit rough.
I mean, it’s clearly two different games welded together. I don’t know exactly WHY I want these things welded together, but they both worked pretty well. (Though why there’s a big black info box hovering on top of my cursor when I’m trying to place a building is mystifying. Oh well, they’ll fix that.)
Yeah, that was my biggest complaint. So dumb.
I mean, every Anno is in some ways two games welded together, with the different continents/biomes which have different tech trees and sometimes mechanics. It’s just that this one goes all the way and looks to a different series entirely for its other biome.
Oh wow, when you guys said the surface city of SteamWorld Build is Anno-like, I didn’t realize the first tier was going to play exactly like Anno. Quit playing the demo just before I got Engineers as I figure I’ll end up buying this anyway so I’ll just enjoy it all then.
Are we talking just the city building and advancement mechanics of Anno, or all the associated RTS stuff?
Just the city building side. And it’s just the one city up top AFAIK. But the basics of how your residential areas get built, citizen needs, tiering up, production buildings/chains within range of warehouses, placing fields around your agricultural buildings, are all lifted straight out of Anno. I didn’t delve into the underground, but I believe that’s where all the combat is, but that’s supposed to be more like Dungeon Keeper.
EDIT: To be clear, I don’t mind that at all! I’m not aware of any other games using the Anno mechanics, so it’s nice to see someone else’s take on that particular design. And obviously the larger game setup is doing something very different.
It said something about trading with other towns via the railroad. Maybe that’s just in the form of setting up swaps like you do in the demo, but to me it implied you probably leave a site at a certain point and start at another, but can get goods from the first by train. Kinda like Zeus? Maybe?
I don’t get the impression you’ll be jumping between them like in Anno, though. At any one time I think you’ve got one settlement on the surface and the mine stuff. I doubt they’d go more complex than that with a SteamWorld game.
From the feature list on Steam
Maybe your previous settlements will be available to trade with on the later maps?
Yeah, this is the impression I got. Definitely not multiple simultaneous islands like Anno, that was pretty clear.
To me that sounds like the good part of Anno. All the RTS stuff largely feels like putting distracting tactics into a strategy game.
The train station allows you to trade in a sort of abstract way - you’re not trading with anyone in particular but you’re able to exchange on resource for another. Seems like it’s always $1000 for 1 of any resource (wood, tools, etc). You can set persistent trade orders so that every time the train arrives (around every 4 minutes IIRC) your order is executed. When I built my town, I had a standing order to purchase 10 wood for 10k.
The train also provides 3 upgrade ‘cards’ which you can purchase to place into buildings - each building has one open slot, and you can purchase productivity improvements, movement speed increases and the like. You can also purchase some of the more rare resources (rubies, gold) via these cards. They are randomly refreshed when the train arrives.
Another builder that dropped today. I believe it’s a post-apocalyptic builder that has some moral choices ala Frostpunk. Demo is available. Off to try it now!