Steamworld Heist - Cargo Commander meets Valkyria Chronicles with Space Cowbots?

So this just released, currently only in the 3DS eShop but due to hit … everything at some point, much like it’s predecessor Steamworld Dig (Steam, PS4, Vita, XB1, Wii-U, iOS).

Looks kind of cool, nothing like Dig except for the style and the 2D side-view; it’s ‘a space adventure with turn-based tactical shootouts, where you aim in real time and perform awesome bullet-bouncing trick shots.’ Looks like you’re raiding procedural space hulks like Cargo Commander.

Some good reviews so far. Anyone tried it? I’d be giving it a shot if I wasn’t currently buried deep into Xenoblade Chronicles X. Launch trailer here.

I loved Steamworld Dig on Vita so I can’t wait for this to expand to more platforms. The reviews I’ve seen are universally incredibly positive.

Robotic Bovines!?!?!

Cowbots v Cow-orkers!

Have to wait for the PC release, but I’m going to get it as soon as it’s available. I enjoyed SW Dig and SW Heist looks neat as well. Will be more than happy to support the devs.

This looks awesome, hopefully it comes out for PC (or PS4) soon and when it does, I’ll grab it just for the style alone, but also because it DOES look like a lot of fun.

Grabbed this the other day - can’t stop playing. Exactly as described by OP, lots of interesting tricks to be done with bullet bouncing and fairly deep strategy also, with changing loadouts. Level-ups are done pretty interestingly - stats don’t go up across the board per se, but “skills” are unlocked, adding to health, damage done, or new abilities. A few (not so useful) tips - don’t bother killing everything, just grab swag and run, don’t take too long as the waves of reinforcements can be crushing, and scopes are very helpful on all weapons.

I need a little help and cannot find any help on the game website.

Is there a way to save in the game?

I cannot figure out how to give items to crew members or switch hats around.

Are the hats cosmetic only or do they give game effects?

Edit:
Well I finally figured out that you can do the loadout at he beginning of a mission and the saves are automatically working (at first I thought it was not happening on its own).

This released on iOS yesterday and I am quite enjoying it thus far.

Agreed, it’s great on the iPad.

This is on sale now on iOS – $4.99, half off, lowest price it has been.

Lovin’ it, and also the soundtrack.

Holy crap I can’t believe how little talk this game got! Hello…hello…helooooooo Anyone here?

I’m not saying it’s GOTY material, but it is focused, has a nice sense of progression, challenging enough, nice music… It’s a pretty darn good game. I pretty much just played this to the exclusion of everything else for 3-4 days.

I’d say it’s a much better game than Steamworld Dig, which was fun but essentially a cute casual game. Heist has some chops to it. I played on the default difficulty (experienced), failed a handful of missions a couple times, and had some tense moments in some of the missions I did complete successfully. I’d say in that respect it shares some DNA with Invisible Inc. Like Invisible Inc, there is typically an escalating difficulty as you cross certain turn thresholds as more reinforcements join the fight, or turrets activate. There are also moment where the odds are tipping out of your favor as you complete your objective but still need to get to the extraction point.

I didn’t think I was going to win the final mission on my first try. It seemed like things were snowballing out of control, but I pulled it off and it felt great.

There are different classes of bots in our crew which enabled them to equip different weapons and unlock different skills. There is a variety of loot to find that can offer protection, grant more firepower, make the bot more mobile, etc… I tended to run with 1 or 2 sharpshooters because they can use guns that have a laser sight. Knowing exactly where the bullet was going to go was comforting, especially at longer ranges. I think there were 4 other classes or so, which lets you tailor things to how you enjoy playing. I’m not sure how many combinations are viable as I only played through once.

So the next time you’re staring at your backlog trying to decide what to play, this is a really easy game to understand and get into. Not much activation energy that you need to overcome, just fire it up and it’s pretty self explanatory.

My one complaint is that I had trouble distinguishing what floors my bullets would go through to hit targets on higher or lower levels and which ones would prevent them from passing. It probably shouldn’t have been as troubling to me as it was.

Also, you can shoot robots’ hats off their heads and steal 'em. Collect them all!

I’m totally on this when I get a chance @robc04! It’s not slipped under my radar!

Yep, agreed - this is pretty great for some light tactical gaming. I think it got a little bit easy towards the end, but maybe I’d got ahead of the power curve as I was mainly using the same team for the latter half.

It’s also great how much personality each of the bots had - both in terms of skills and vocal noises.

Also, here’s a Cool Ghosts video for anyone on the fence:

I had the opposite problem, I stalled out near the end. Great journey to the end though.

I played through this and really enjoyed it, but at the end of the day I was disappointed with the tactical variety. Basically, because it uses a side-view (i.e. with gravity and floors as horizontal barriers) instead of a top-view (e.g. X-Com), mobility is at a huge, huge premium, and snipers are essentially useless. IIRC, towards the end there are also a few frustrating missions that change goals halfway through (usually in the form of: your bots should be in a particular place when you do X), to the extent that you kind of just need to either be lucky or re-play the mission at least twice.

For some reason, I also didn’t love re-playing missions after I’d completed them once. There wasn’t quite enough variety to them for me to find them satisfying to play through the same mission goals multiple times. As with the sniper comment above, it often felt like there were strictly better and strictly worse loadouts.

All that being said, I enjoyed it a lot as long as it had new content to throw t me. Also, the music was really, really good.

“Everybody’s going to the clockwork vaudeville…”

There are 2 basic kinds of sniper weapons, one doesn’t let you shoot after moving and the other one does. I avoided the ones that limited my mobility, but found snipers to be invaluable to my play style so I could have some “sure thing” longer distance shots.

I agree that I never replayed a mission once I succeeded, even if I didn’t get the maximum number of stars. The game probably could have cut the number of battles by 25% and been the better for it to keep it feeling fresh.

Been playing this on my Vita the last couple of weeks and I’m really enjoying it. It’s such a polished title and the tactical battles can be tough. I’ve ratcheted up the difficulty to Veteran to keep the pressure on and failed a few missions numerous times due to silly mistakes and oversights. The proc-gen can be quite subtle but I’m finding the extra difficulty really forces me to think about positioning, gear loadouts and character abilities. I’m a big fan of sniping (the wait a turn kind) and try to keep those characters near doors so they’re armed and ready on the next turn when they open. Bullet deflection kills are really satisfying.

In the past I’ve found Vita ports/versions lacking, either because the UI/text is a too small, touchpad controls bugger things up or the loading times/performance are all over the place but the Steamworld games are perfect here.

I must confess this may be the first strategy game (well, actually, second, there was Valkyria Chronicles…) where I systematically plug a joypad on the PC version to play it properly. They really nailed the sort of next evolution of Worms I was hoping for, but which never came.