SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech, Image & Form's card-based RPG, is finally coming to PC after launching on Switch in April. Instead of digging mines or flying around in spaceships, this time you'll be leading a party of robots through a fantasy realm, duking it out with knights and monsters in turn-based card battles. It's the fourth time the developer has experimented with a new setting and genre, and judging by the Switch version's reception, it sounds like a welcome addition to the series.
Image & Form has proved to be a pretty agile developer, taking its robots in vastly different directions with each new game, though it did return to prospecting with SteamWorld Dig 2. SteamWorld Quest looks a bit more like Heist than the others, both being turn-based games where you control a customisable party, but the card-based combat is a first for the series.
You can build your deck from over 100 punch cards, including spells for your robo-wizards, found while questing or crafted. They can be upgraded, too, and chained together in battle or used to create combos. At the start of each turn, you select three cards, using some to build up steam, which can then be spent on using more costly abilities. So there's resource management to worry about, too.
There's your typical RPG stuff, as well, like exploring dungeons, hunting down chests, building up your band of heroes, slaying dragons—the traditional duties of an adventurer. And like the rest of the SteamWorld games, this medieval romp is pretty easy on the eyes and boasts some cracking character design.
SteamWorld Quest is due out on Steam on May 31.
Random characters kept swearing in Obsidian's font-obsessed murder-mystery when its procedural error system ran amok: 'Naughtiness abounded'
Eagle-eyed streamer spots that Roberta Williams' portrait in King's Quest 4 is based on her author photo on the back of the game box: 'I never noticed it before.'
