Steel Seed | PC Demo Review
I was lucky enough to get my hands on the demo for Steel Seed, and upcoming action/stealth game from Storm in a Teacup. Although the demo only took an hour or so to complete, it showed a ton of promise. The setting is very unique and inviting, and I look forward to getting my hands on the full game. The mechanics are very familiar to other games I’ve played, but I’m not counting that as a negative. On the contrary, I was right at home and able to absorb the beautiful scenery of this vertical slice.
Chat GPT Be Damned
The demo gives absolutely no insight as to the story of Steel Seed. I was dropped right into the middle of a random mission with not so much as any text. Here’s the game’s description from the press release:
“Steel Seed is a stealth adventure single-player game set in a dark sci-fi world, in which the player takes the role of Zoe – a heroine in an artificial bionical body – and flying drone Koby to discover what happened to humanity inside a hostile underground facility run by robots.
Zoe is an artificial intelligence that would act like and think itself as human. Its prototype humanoid robot body was indistinguishable from a real human. Koby is one of the main features of the Steel Seed and it is going to help Zoe to solve every kind of problem: activating machinery, exploiting the environment, distracting the enemies or fighting them.”
While this might be very little to go on, I’m genuinely intrigued by what Steel Seed has to offer in terms of its narrative. From the one-sided conversations Zoe has with Koby, Zoe’s father seems to play a vital part. What stands out is the atmosphere. According to my readings, the complex I navigated was constructed by an evil artificial intelligence. It’s clear that Zoe’s mission is to thwart this AI and (I’m assuming) rescue her father.
Charted Territory
Thankfully I was able to experience a good amount of the gameplay in the short demo. As mentioned above, the mechanics feel very familiar, but not from a single game. This keeps Steel Seed from feeling completely derivative. On the contrary, it feels like a combination of comfortable gameplay motifs to make it come across as a fresh experience
You control Zoe in third person. She has sword with both light and heavy attacks, but you have the option to stealth your way through encounters instead of engaging. Koby offers a birds-eye view of each arena, allowing you to “mark” each enemy. You can swap control to him at any time, which switches the view to a first-person flight mode with full 3D control. Once you have a lay of the land, you can study patrol patterns and take out each one with a takedown. If the AI is alerted to Zoe’s or Koby’s presence, you’ll have to take them out the ol’ fashioned way.
Koby has other useful functions. Sometimes Zoe’s path is blocked, and he’ll fly ahead to open a path for our heroine. He can also aid in battle by stunning enemies. Koby might only be able to communicate in boops and beeps, but he seems like a fun companion for this journey.
The other aspect of the gameplay centers on traversal. Zoe will climb through the environment much like Nathan Drake, looking for glowing yellow grasping points. She also has the ability to wall-run on certain surfaces, which mixes up the gameplay a bit. I felt right at home in these particular sections.
Steel Seed [demo] Verdict
The developer was very clear in the demo that this version of Steel Seed was not the finished product. There are clearly some UI kinks to work out, but this has the bones of a very interesting narrative with familiar play mechanics. There were a lot of new abilities in a skill tree, but they weren’t available to unlock yet. I’m very excited about where this title goes, and it’s definitely on my radar. I think it’s safe to say that I’ll be checking this one out when it inevitably releases later this year. If you’d like to check out the demo for yourself, you can do so on PC.
To hear me talk more about the demo for Steel Seed, be sure to listen to our June 19th podcast episode.
This review is based on a PC demo copy of Steel Seed provided by Mark Allen PR for coverage purposes. The demo is currently exclusive to PC, but the full game will also be available on Xbox and PlayStation.
