There are quite a lot of games to pick from. Past entries include SteamWorld Dig, SteamWorld Dig 2, SteamWorld Heist: Ultimate Edition, SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech and SteamWorld: Tower. STEAMWORLD QUEST SteamWorld Quest is the roleplaying card game you’ve been waiting for! Lead a party of aspiring heroes through a hand-drawn world and build, craft and upgrade your party’s decks in order to stop an ancient menace. SteamWorld Quest is far more of an RPG than it is a card game, but its deck-building twists offer an insane amount of gameplay choice. Its charming characters have tons of individual strategies to. SteamWorld Quest is the second game in the franchise to hit iOS following the wonderful SteamWorld Heist. But aside from its charming steampunk aesthetic and a fondness for side-on turn-based combat, the two games share surprisingly little in common. A far better comparison, at least in terms of its card-driven combat mechanics, is Slay the Spire.
Scroll down to see a video review of SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech.
Over the last decade, developer Image & Form has been turning out innovative and fun spins on familiar genres through their SteamWorld series. Taking place in a world entirely populated by steam-powered robots, SteamWorld Dig and SteamWorld Heist took the templates of a Metroidvania and a turn-based strategy game respectively and put them through a steampunk-y filter. The resulting games were not just fun but also offered something entirely new to fans of those genres. On top of that, Image & Form’s art design in every SteamWorld game has been simply delightful, with brilliant sprite work full of personality and imagination.
In their latest game, SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech, the stunning sprites and beautiful world are still there, but innovation with the genre was, unfortunately, lacking.
Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: After a mysterious army attacks their village, a plucky band of young heroes must leave their home on a quest, uncovering secrets of a dark conspiracy, meeting quirky new allies, and learning about themselves along the way. That’s about as generic a plot as you can find in a fantasy RPG, and it’s the plot of SteamWorld Quest. There are no twists or turns that subvert expectations of this well-trodden tale. It’s fantasy paint-by-numbers, right down to the search for the mysterious artifact that could destroy the world.
Even ignoring the generic fantasy plot, the dialogue is often groan-worthy, and not in a fun way. When one of the characters responded to a question with “And don’t call me Shirley,” I wanted to bury my face in my controller. Stealing a 40-year-old Leslie Nielsen joke from Airplane! is bad enough, but stripping it of its deadpan delivery and original context kills the laugh.
The linear nature of the game is also disappointing. The story is divided into self-contained chapters, with no real character choice or roleplaying involved. You do have the option to go back and replay chapters to find treasure that you missed or grind for money and experience. Yet there is no real incentive to do so, as you will have to play through all of the same events again (thankfully, there is a skip scene button available right from the start).
The battles in SteamWorld Quest are a fun and effective mix of turn-based and card-based systems. You equip your heroes with cards (cleverly, they are punch cards), much like you do with weapons and accessories. At the beginning of each battle, you draw six at random. By playing lower-powered cards, you can build up “gears” that act similarly to MP, allowing you to use more powerful attacks and abilities. By selecting the right cards in the right order, you can chain together your actions, giving you additional and enhanced effects. It’s a very effective battle system that builds on other card-based systems that have come out over the last few years. Aside from an unbalanced endgame with a very sharp difficulty spike, battles are always enjoyable. Experimenting with different card loads to find one that will cover all of your bases so you can swiftly crush your enemies (who also use a card deck mechanic) is super fun. Plus, there is an option to speed up the battles, which is a welcome quality-of-life addition.
One area where SteamWorld Quest definitely lives up to its predecessors is the graphics department. The unique aesthetic of the SteamWorld games is in full effect, with beautifully drawn robotic characters shining with polish and personality. The team at Image & Form have wonderfully adapted traditional fantasy class tropes, giving them a robotic twist. The classes of alchemist Copernica or wannabe knight Armilly are instantly identifiable with just one look, and every other character design, including the NPCs, are just brimming with personality and charm. I was a bit disappointed that many of the bosses and minibosses were palette swaps of each other, but on the whole, the graphics are flat-out gorgeous.
Another great aspect of SteamWorld Quest is its sound design. The soundtrack is lovely, evoking the memory of other classic fantasy tales while giving everything a robotic twist. Each character “speaks” in robotic gibberish, nicely contributing to the juxtaposition of the fantasy elements with the steampunk level of technology.
In the end, SteamWorld Quest feels much more like a polished mobile game than a console RPG. This game is not too long, pleasant, and fun to play in short bursts. But those looking for deep character growth, an explorable world, and a compelling story should look elsewhere (possibly at the other SteamWorld games). Despite the eye-catching graphics and character design, there just isn’t enough here to keep me coming back. It’s a rare misstep from Image & Form, but given their past output, I suspect it is one that they will learn from. SteamWorld Dig 2 took everything great about the original and improved upon it. Let’s hope the same happens with SteamWorld Quest, should it get a sequel.
Developers | |
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Publishers | |
Release dates | |
Windows | May 31, 2019 |
macOS (OS X) | May 31, 2019 |
Linux | May 31, 2019 |
Reception | |
OpenCritic | 82 |
IGDB | 80 |
Taxonomy | |
Series | SteamWorld |
SteamWorld | |
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SteamWorld Dig | 2013 |
SteamWorld Heist | 2016 |
SteamWorld Dig 2 | 2017 |
SteamWorld Quest | 2019 |
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General information
- GOG.com Community Discussions
- GOG.com Support Page
- Steam Community Discussions
Availability[edit]
Source | DRM | Notes | Keys | OS |
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GamersGate | ||||
Gamesplanet | ||||
GOG.com | ||||
Green Man Gaming | ||||
Steam |
Game data[edit]
Configuration file(s) location[edit]
System | Location |
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Windows | %USERPROFILE%DocumentsMy GamesSteamWorld Quest<user-id>* .cfg%USERPROFILE%DocumentsMy GamesSteamWorld Quest<user-id> * .xml |
macOS (OS X) | |
Linux |
- It's unknown whether this game follows the XDG Base Directory Specification on Linux. Please fill in this information.
Save game data location[edit]
System | Location |
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Windows | %USERPROFILE%DocumentsMy GamesSteamWorld Quest<user-id>savegame_XXX .dat |
macOS (OS X) | |
Linux |
Save game cloud syncing[edit]
Video settings[edit]
Graphics feature | State | Notes |
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Widescreen resolution | ||
Multi-monitor | ||
Ultra-widescreen | Anamorphic 16:9 only. | |
4K Ultra HD | ||
Field of view (FOV) | ||
Windowed | Freely resizeable. | |
Borderless fullscreen windowed | See Borderless fullscreen windowed. | |
Anisotropic filtering (AF) | ||
Anti-aliasing (AA) | Antialiasing is applied into the assets themselves. | |
Vertical sync (Vsync) | ||
60 FPS and 120+ FPS | ||
High dynamic range display (HDR) |
Borderless fullscreen windowed[edit]
Enable borderless window[1] |
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Input settings[edit]
Keyboard and mouse | State | Notes |
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Remapping | Two keys per action. | |
Mouse acceleration | ||
Mouse sensitivity | ||
Mouse input in menus | ||
Mouse Y-axis inversion | Cursor based movement only. | |
Controller | ||
Controller support | ||
Full controller support | ||
Controller remapping | Two buttons per action. | |
Controller sensitivity | Movement speed is constant. | |
Controller Y-axis inversion |
Controller types |
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XInput-compatible controllers |
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Xbox button prompts |
Impulse Trigger vibration |
DualShock 4 controllers | ||
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DualShock button prompts | ||
Light bar support | ||
Connection modes | V1, Wireless Adapter. Wired. V2 and bluetooth untested. |
Generic/other controllers | Trough SDL2. |
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Button prompts | Switch Pro Controller supported and prompts included.[2] Defaults to Xbox button prompts if unknown. |
Additional information | |
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Controller hotplugging | |
Haptic feedback | |
Simultaneous controller+KB/M | Prompts shows up with last control method used and sometimes come up as 'unassigned' instead. |
Audio settings[edit]
Audio feature | State | Notes |
---|---|---|
Separate volume controls | Music and sound, mumbling speak mute. | |
Surround sound | ||
Subtitles | Almost all speech is text only. | |
Closed captions | ||
Mute on focus lost | Toggleable option in settings. |
Localizations
Language | UI | Audio | Sub | Notes |
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English | ||||
French | ||||
German | ||||
Italian | ||||
Russian | ||||
Spanish |
Issues unresolved[edit]
- Official FAQ and support contact information.
Unexpected runtime error: Could not get My Documents folder[edit]
Change documents folder name[3] |
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Other information[edit]
API[edit]
Steamworld Quest Review
Executable | 32-bit | 64-bit | Notes |
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Windows | |||
macOS (OS X) | |||
Linux |
Middleware[edit]
System requirements[edit]
Windows | ||
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Minimum | Recommended | |
Operating system (OS) | 7 | |
Processor (CPU) | 2 GHz, SSE2 support | 2 GHz dual-core |
System memory (RAM) | 1 GB | |
Hard disk drive (HDD) | 700 MB | |
Video card (GPU) | Intel HD Graphics 4600 512 MB of VRAM OpenGL 2.1 compatible | Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 AMD Radeon HD 7870 |
macOS (OS X) | ||
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Minimum | Recommended | |
Operating system (OS) | 10.7 | |
Processor (CPU) | 2 GHz | 2 GHz dual-core |
System memory (RAM) | 1 GB | |
Hard disk drive (HDD) | 700 MB | |
Video card (GPU) | Intel HD Graphics 4600 512 MB of VRAM OpenGL 2.1 compatible | Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 AMD Radeon HD 7870 |
Linux | ||
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Minimum | Recommended | |
Operating system (OS) | SteamOS 2.0, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS | |
Processor (CPU) | 2 GHz | 2 GHz dual-core |
System memory (RAM) | 1 GB | |
Hard disk drive (HDD) | 700 MB | |
Video card (GPU) | Intel HD Graphics 4600 512 MB of VRAM OpenGL 2.1 compatible | Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 AMD Radeon HD 7870 |
Steamworld Quest Chapter 4
References
Steamworld Quest Pc
- ↑Verified by User:Marioysikax on 2019-06-29
- ↑Verified by User:Marioysikax on 2019-08-03
- https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/165183350913499136/607234758665043978/804010_20190803183332_1.png
- ↑Unexpected runtime error: Could not get My Documents folder, error code: -2147024891 :: SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech Game Support - last accessed on 2019-06-29