Steel Seed is coming to remind us why robots are a classic videogame enemy

Done right, robots can make a super satisfying videogame enemy. The one thing Binary Domain got right was its robots, who dented and broke and dragged themselves toward you even after you shot their legs off. From the dinosaurs in Horizon Zero Dawn to the turrets in Portal, we love a metal jerk AI bad guy. Although, when you think about it, technically every videogame enemy is AI.

Before we get too philosophical, here's Steel Seed to remind us why we like to fight robots whether they look like the geth out of Mass Effect or the loaderbots from Borderlands or, in this case, a bit of both. This stealth-action game featured in today's PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted pits you against a variety of bots fresh off the assembly line and lets you slash them with a laser sword and shoot them with help from a friendly drone named Koby, who is here to prove not all robots are evil.

The trailer for Steel Seed shows our protagonist, Zoe, doing a lot more than just pushing robots off ledges with her laser sword. She's a master of parkour, doing a lot of climbing, wallrunning, and skate-sliding, as well as some sweet stealth moves. Steel Seed isn't just a pure action game, but one where we'll be able to avoid at least some enemies with sneakery, while setting up others for a perfect stealth kill, whether via air-assassination, a tricksy backstab, or yanking them off a ledge.

Steel Seed is the next game from Storm in a Teacup, the developers of BioShock-esque horror game Close to the Sun. It's due out in 2025, and you can wishlist it on Steam.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.