Steel Seed Review

I quite enjoyed Storm in a Teacup’s previous title Close to the Sun; it had its issues, but there was the seed of something great. So when approached with their next tile, Steel Seed, I was pretty hopeful indeed. Sadly, Steel Seed still doesn’t live up to its potential, and far too often it feels as though the game is fighting itself in terms of what it wants to be, leading to under utilised mechanics and issues across the board. 

We play as Zoe as she awakens in a dangerous, futuristic world where AI has seemingly taken over, and humanity is on the brink of extinction. Along with her trusted sidekick Koby – a multitool of usefulness, as well as a bit of charm in this bleak world – we set out to free the remaining surviving humans and hopefully restore humanity. It’s a grandiose premise, and one that’s heavily steeped in current day AI chatter; are humans really the dominant life form, or are we better off using AI to build a better tomorrow. Much like Close to the Sun, Steel Seed is quite heavy on the narrative. Where the prior game did keep me interested throughout, Steel Seed doesn’t manage to be as engrossing. The performances, mainly of Zoe as she’s one of the few we hear speak throughout, are fairly middling, and there’s lots of talk of proper noun important details that frankly was just never engaging enough for me to remember what was what. It’s a shame as the premise is fine, but by the time I got to the end I really didn’t care for who was saved or what that meant for humanity in this world. 

Gameplay fares mildly better depending on the scenario. The world is broken up into several large, linear areas, with the main MacGuffin being the shards of Zoe’s father’s consciousness at the end of each area  to collect. Along the way, we’ll either be stealthing or fighting our way through the AI enemies – one of which is better than the other.

Stealth is basic but fine. Zoe can cling to walls to hide out of sight, and perform stealth kills if an enemy gets close enough. Line of sight needs to be avoided but we get a fair time to duck out of the way if we’re close to being spotted, as well as a split second slowdown effect to help us make that final dodge roll. Zoe can climb up certain lit up handholds and ledges, and perform aerial assassinations too. Koby also comes into play, allowing us to tag enemies or lay traps for them from the safety of cover. It also gets upgrades throughout the game to be able to place more deadly traps or areas of ‘glitch’ that allow Zoe to go invisible once she’s crouched within it.

I’ve always enjoyed the stealth approach in games, and what’s here is functionally good enough to let us get through most encounters without being spotted. Some slightly uneven control feel can make for frustration though, as some walls can’t be hugged and occasionally the controls don’t quite do what we want them too, leading to us getting caught. But these issues aside, stealth play is the way to go to get the most out of Steel Seed. By collecting currency we can upgrade Zoe too with better stealth capabilities, though be mindful of spending all of your points here.

As there’s the other aspect to consider in combat and, well, I did not find this anywhere near as fun. It feels like a mix of both Souls-like and action games, but not as fully formed as either style. On Normal difficulty, Zoe gets beaten down with just a few hits and the enemies attack with much more ease than she can reasonably defend against. She has both light and heavy attacks but hitting enemies only suns them for a few hits, after which they can attack while we’re still hitting them, unable to dodge. All enemies also take a hell of a beating, especially the big brute types, and so rather than a fun back and forth of fighting and defence, we end up ducking in for one or two light hits then running away while they do a massive AOE attack. And the fewer times we have to fight the teleporting enemies the better as they can pop up out of nowhere and absolutely wreck us with little we can do about it.

Which makes it all the more fun when, after focussing on building up our Stealth abilities for most of the game, we get forced into two seperate combat encounters that throw multiple waves of enemies at us, mixing the big brutes and teleporting enemies in. Woefully underpowered, and with not much experience at the combat (as, you know, I’d been avoiding it all game) these sequences in the final act proved to be incredibly frustrating. 

Zoe has an energy bar that can be used for certain upgraded attacks but is also vital to restore health. This bar fills up as we hit enemies but it’s too quick to drain and too slow to build for the flow of the combat here. As I said above, it feels like we’re a Souls-like fighter while the enemies are from an action game, with them able to get quick cheap shots in when we’re struggling to move between combat and dodging. It just doesn’t gel at all, and making these two fights mandatory feels like a cheap move so late in the game. We can thankfully lower the difficulty in game, but even then the fights just aren’t fun. 

This is only made worse by some poor checkpointing, albeit this is an issue for the game as a whole. We manually save at S4VI points, but also get checkpoints as we get to new sections. The problem is that the checkpoints tend to be before a cutscene, or back at the beginning of a prolonged encounter, and failing means doing far too much over again. Two examples stick to mind; one of the aforementioned mandatory fights has us running up a long ramp, then slowly walking down the other side as Zoe repeats her dialogue about how this can’t possibly be an ambush…oh wait it is. The fight was frustrating, but having to go through this rigmarole each time only made it worse; and a later section where, having stealthed through two waves of enemies to successfully unlock a path forward, I was killed by an environmental hazard and had to repeat the last half of it. 

Perhaps that last point is slightly nitpicky, but it’s emblematic of my feelings on the game as a whole. It has some promising aspects, but at every turn it just falls short in ways that feel like a step backwards compared to more contemporary titles. Going fully in or stealth or action might have solved some of Steel Seed’s problems, but as it is this is a sadly underwhelming experience.

Conclusion

Despite some early potential, we came away from Steel Seed underwhelmed by its muddled gameplay style and not all that compelling tale. It has its moments, but players looking for either stealth or action gaming are best off looking elsewhere.