SteamWorld Dig Coming To PC In December

Indie platformer-adventure SteamWorld Dig is heading to PC, it has been announced. The title released on 3DS earlier this year to unanimous praise, and in our review Blair highlighted the game’s “polished presentation” and “great replay value”, scoring it 9/10.

Talking to RPS, SteamWorld Dig’s developers – Image & Form – have been discussing the original title’s runaway success, and what’s new in the HD PC re-release.

“SteamWorld Dig is a return to classic gameplay mechanics” says CEO Brjann Sigurgeirsson, “It’s a gamer’s game! We don’t tell you what to do, or how you should play the game. If you want to explore it fully, do it. If you want to speedrun to see how fast you can beat it, be our guest. If you want to dig a little more to the left – well, all that soil is there for you to dig through”.

According to Sigurgeirsson, although the game’s code was originally designed with PC testing in mind, SteamWorld Dig’s update has seen “a lot of scaling work” with regards to the design. “Going from the 400×240-pixel top screen of the 3DS to HD graphics, we’ve had to redo quite a few animations.”

“On the 3DS, shop items, the map and other status icons reside on the lower screen, leaving the top screen pretty clean and uncluttered, and we’ve had to rethink quite a few things there,” he continues. “If we had just scaled everything up to fit the PC screen, Rusty would have ended up looking very big – too big.”

As well as the updated graphics, newly included Achievements, cloud-saves and “extra visual flair”, the game’s control system and sound design have also been reworked for PC players, it was announced, although “additional gameplay content” is likely to be patched in at a later date, rather than included in a rushed and “crap” day-one release.

Finally, Sigurgeirsson spoke about a potential SteamWorld Dig sequel, saying that at least two potential new SteamWorld games are in the pipeline, and will come to 3DS and PC at some point, all gods willing. “If we can manage releasing on multiple platforms simultaneously, then we’ll probably do it” he said. “The next game in the SteamWorld series will not be a direct sequel to SteamWorld Dig – it will not be a SWD2, we’ll save that one for a while. The gameplay of the next game will be similar… and, at the same time, quite different.”

SteamWorld Dig is out now for 3DS, and will release on Windows PC, via Steam, December 5th.

Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun.