The original developers of the SteamWorld series at Image and Form Games (which is now merged with Thunderful Games) are working on The Gunk right now, which is launching in a little over a month, but SteamWorld, as you may have guessed, still has life left in it.
Thunderful has announced a new game in the series, being developed by itself, called SteamWorld Headhunter. This one is shaping up to be quite a different experience from its predecessors. For starters, its fully 3D, a first for the series. Meanwhile, it’s also co-op. Its brief teaser trailer shows two robots involved in a Wild West-style standoff, though at the end, a spider-like robot emerges to spoil the party. It doesn’t tell us a whole lot about the game, but it does give us a good glimpse of what it will look like, visually.
SteamWorld as a series has never been afraid to experiment. Though the mainline Dig games are, of course, are 2D Metroidvanias, others have veered in different directors, from the deck-building RPG gameplay of SteamWorld Quest to the XCOM-style turn-based strategy of SteamWorld Heist to, of course, the one that started it all- the tower defence strategy gameplay of SteamWorld Tower Defence for the Nintendo DS. It should be interesting to see how this next jump fares.
No release window or target platforms have been announced for SteamWorld Headhunter yet. Stay tuned for more updates.