In Steel Seed you take on the role of Zoe as she wakes up in a new cybernetic body thousands of years later in a futuristic underground facility. She is joined by a flying drone companion KOBY in this strange new world. As she takes her first steps and explores the depths of this gigantic facility she soon encounters hostile A.I. robots, hell bent on stopping her reach her destination.
And where is KOBY taking her?
To the heart of the facility to meet the program S4VI who tells her that the facility was created by her father in order to save humanity and preserve it until A.I. restore the earth to be habitable again.
In order to fulfill her father’s plans to save humanity she must set out to each ‘node’ (location) of the facility to find 4 shards to restore her fathers consciousness.
It’s a simple story that feels like a mashup of sci-fi tropes from films such as Tron, The Matrix and A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
The story is told not through conventional cutscenes but through dialogue with S4VI as you explore his living space and via KOBY as you explore each node. However conversations with KOBY are rather one sided with most of the story details coming from Zoe and KOBY ‘beeps and bloops’ back at her. Most of the story is told environmentally as you explore the facility, with subtle nods to the past and each area showing you something different visually to how this facility has been working to restore the future.
Now down to the gameplay.
‘Steel Seed’ is essentially a Souls-like game. With challenging enemies, respawn points and skill trees to advance your combat style. However while playing Steel Seed I couldn’t help but time and again find it highly influenced by the gameplay of the Jedi Survivor games.
First off the combat is very similar (with the substitution of a sword instead of a light sabre). You have light attacks and heavy attacks to take out enemies however you need to dodge a lot as they will try to kill you any chance they get. Learning the pattern of when they will strike is key. Steel Seed encourages you to use stealth instead of head on assaults as enemies are tough (even on the lowest difficulty setting) you can hide behind cover or in floor ventilation which makes you invisible, sneak up behind them and take them down. You can even take them down from above too.
I would recommend stealth when it works as enemies can become tiresome and quite a pain to take out head to head when alerted as they have a tendency to swarm you. This leads to very tedious combat which feels more of a beat ’em up of your character and less of a fighting chance to get out alive.
You do have a quick time event where you have to press a series of buttons in order to push an enemy off you before they self destruct, however 9 out of 10 times this has always resulted in incredibly annoying glitches where it would launch me up into the air or halfway across the map either killing me or glitching me into a wall.
I have to say that the combat feels more like an endless grind than enjoyable. Luckily though you’re never too short of health packs to heal you in a tight spot as these replenish after you attack an enemy. The only drawback is if you get swarmed by enemies these health packs will be used very quickly but won’t necessarily replenish as fast as you want them to due to either having to run away or being hit constantly.
Combat aside, the main gameplay mechanic is jumping and climbing. Steel Seed is very platform based and like with the Jedi games the maps are very vertical with a lot of room to fall to your death.
This is okay as there are a lot of cool visuals to look at while climbing. Using KOBY is also integrated into the scaling by taking control of him to activate a control switch in order to climb more ledges for Zoe to grab onto and continue her climb. I did encounter another glitch while climbing where if you wanted to move around a 90 degree ledge to go onto the next ledge it wouldn’t let you move in order to progress forward. I would either have to jump down and climb back up multiple times or jump to my death in order to get this to work.
The main drawback though of the whole experience of Steel Seed is that the gameplay gets very repetitive too quickly. It feels more like a chore to get to the location of the shard. Climb up and traverse the nodes, and make it through enemy outposts. Rinse and repeat.
The locations luckily vary and there are different means of travel which makes each area unique, but at it’s core it’s very repetitive. The amount of S4VI points you come across as well makes it even more repetitive. These are like the Jedi meditation points in Jedi Survivor.
However I seemed to come across one every 5 minutes, which made the fear of reaching a save point less stressful.
From here you can fast travel between different nodes, save the game, heal Zoe (although this respawns enemies), unlock new suits for you and KOBY and access your skill tree. From this tree you can unlock skills to improve your combat and give you a better chance at survival while going through outposts. I personally liked the hack enemies ability to give me an ally on the field.
Graphics wise Steel Seed is gorgeous to look at. Each location is a visual treat for the eyes with some truly stunning set design. Character also looks unique with great attention to detail on Zoe and KOBY.
Voice overs are well acted from Zoe with great sound design for the enemy A.I. and for KOBY.
Overall Steel Seed is a fun little indie game with an interesting story which is unfortunately weighed down by repetitive gameplay and annoying glitches.
Steel Seed Gameplay Video
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The code was provided by the distributor.
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