The turn-based strategy of SteamWorld Heist managed to land on our “10 Games We Liked” list last year in its 3DS incarnation, even though it came out in December. My chief concern with the game was the 3DS’s screen causing some issues with aiming and spotting treasure. Thankfully Image & Form followed on from SteamWorld Dig’s tradition and brought the game to consoles. Now that Heist has crossed to the Wii U, I’m not sure if it’ll be eligible for this year’s Games We Liked, but it should be.

Heist’s story is simple: Protagonist Piper leads a group of Steambots who are trying to eke out a living on the outskirts of a galaxy, with various enemies trying to bust them. As the bots move around, they escalate the stakes in a fashion I found quite interesting. Unlike SteamWorld Dig, each mission is its own level with rewards, and additional rewards (“swag”) can be picked up along the way. Each Steambot can only move a certain distance on a 2D plane, and moving too far will prevent them from entering combat. As the Steambots explore, they pick up water (the game’s currency) and weapons that help take down the enemy robots. There’s both ranged and melee combat options as well, with different robots focusing on different strategies. My only complaint is that I constantly ran out of inventory slots – I was going for 100% swag which meant a lot of extra items - and sorting out the inventory slows the momentum down at the end of the level.

The music is understated, but it’s the graphics that really shine. They’re extremely sharp, and little details that I missed on the 3DS (like the robot’s hats) really stand out on the larger screen. The larger view also makes it easier to line up shots in long-range combat, which changed how I played the game as I felt more comfortable using more long-range attacks. Heist’s flexibility of combat makes it possible to try completely different strategies in different playthroughs. Multiple difficulty levels add to the variety, to the point that even with 10-15 hours to credits it might be possible to sink 100+ hours into SteamWorld Heist. It even works well with the GamePad – either in off-TV or in the bird’s eye view of the map.

Image and Form has been on their game with the SteamWorld series for years, and this is the definitive version of their best game to date. SteamWorld Heist is one of the best things any download service has to offer.