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Thunderful are working on four new SteamWorld games simultaneously. Alongside the previously announced third-person action game SteamWorld Headhunter, they’re also making a citybuilding game, a turn-based tactical shooter, and a puzzle game. Three of them are aiming for release next year.
Thunderful made mention of all of the projects in their quarterly earnings report, referring to each as a “SteamWorld IP game”. The citybuilder is codenamed “Coffee”, due for release in 2023, the same year as SteamWorld Headhunter. The “turn-based tactical shooter/strategy” is codenamed “Caramel” and due in 2024. The puzzle game, “Strawberry”, is due in 2023 but is apparently only planning to release on mobile.
We’ve typically loved every SteamWorld game, even as they’ve leapt from genre to genre, from turn-based tactics in SteamWorld Heist, card battler in SteamWorld Quest, and platformer in SteamWorld Dig 2. I am particularly excited about this studio – Thunderful absorbed/evolved from SteamWorld creators Image & Form – tackling a citybuilder. I have no idea what it would look like, but I’ve also no reason to think they couldn’t pull it off.
For now, it’s only SteamWorld Headhunter that we’ve seen anything of, and only via the teaser trailer embedded above. Headhunter was revealed as part of Thunderful World, a 2021 showcase of all the games in the works at the publisher, which was hosted by Mark Hamill.
The earnings report also notes that Thunderful have acquired the Islanders IP. Islanders is a minimalist town builder that impressed Alec upon release in 2019. It’s apparently now sold over a million copies, and Thunderful plan to expand on it in partnership with the original devs. Nice.