Since it was recently announced that four (!!!) new SteamWorld games are in the works, the first of which is SteamWorld Build, I've been revisiting the past games, and I was reminded how much I love them, the wild swings into different genres that are each weird takes on those genres, and of course, how much I love the bonkers timeline of the setting. I even found the devs' older dev vlogs, where I learned more about the lore and setting (which is making me want to play the one game I started but didn't finish, SteamWorld Quest).

So for fun, here's where each game fits together in the timeline, in release order instead of chronologically, because that's part of what I love. (No spoilers for individual game stories if I can help it, and focused on the setting rather than the characters with one notable exception)

The Timeline

Pre-games

Based on the official (though now incomplete) timeline video, humanity was able to create computers and self-directing robots as early as the industrial revolution, with steam-powered technology. However, this also accelerated the arms race between unknown factions, and while the bots they created for mining and other manual labour toiled away, humanity nearly wiped itself out, leaving only survivors underground.

SteamWorld Tower Defense (2010)

Surviving humans come up from below the surface, seeking the gold that some steam bots have diligently been digging up and storing. The steam bots, who have no use for the gold but have been programed to protect it, fight the humans off and drive them back underground.

SteamWorld Dig (2013)

Some time after Tower Defense, steam bots have their own civilization and towns, and have built a massive brick wall below the surface, above the remaining humans (called "shiners" due to the caustic and mutagenic moonshine they brew, which helped them adapt to loving interview) to keep them at bay.

SteamWorld Heist (2015)

Takes place long after SteamWorld Dig, and long after - notably - the earth exploded. Bot civilization has rebuilt once again and is now spread among the chunks, getting around in cobbled-together spaceships and mining asteroids for water and fuel.

Diesel-powered robots have also appeared (been invented?) and formed a Royalist faction around their Queen, looking down on steam-powred bots as inferior and requisitioning their resources for their grand project of trying to fit the pieces of the earth back together.

SteamWorld Heist: The Outsider (2016)

DLC that takes places within Heist. A mysterious voltbot (powered by "electricity") is found among wreckage from earth. It turns out this if Fen, a lone voltbot who was waiting for someone named "Dot" and in a fugue state with barely any power for so long he doesn't remember anything else. Mysterious!

SteamWorld Dig 2 (2017)

This is where it really gets interesting because this takes place immediately after SteamWorld Dig... on the earth... but also there seem to be a lot of quakes and the bots are split on whether that's worth worrying about. Also very interesting, the start of this game is Dorothy, and she meets a "vectron sprite" (disembodied electronic entity) named Fen, who takes to calling her Dorothy! Interesting! This is all probably fine and not built on the dramatic irony of the whole series!

SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech (2019)

So, the framing device for SteamWorld Quest is a character from Heist, Seabrass, offering to read his son a story. In Heist he mentions his son was eaten by a (space) whale, so it seems the events of Quest are not canon, but the place of telling of the story in the timeline is shortly before Heist, right? And that's why it includes elements not in any other games, like gods and magic and "forests" with "trees".

Well... it would seem that way. Except that Seabrass's son asks for a story about dragons and knights, and Seabrass obliges by saying, "then we have to go way back - to the age of heroes." Is he just giving his son a more exciting frame for this fictional storybook? Not according to the developers! That video is silly but for the sake of the argument I'll assume this is word-of-god canon, in which case... the "Quest Era" was a pre-humanity golden age, an age of robot high culture in which they were more in tune with the physical and biological worlds, allowing them to benefit from alchemy and magic. And at some point, that culture was wiped out, leading to humanity rising... and eventually (re?)inventing robots, and wiping out most of that natural world.

SteamWorld Build (2023)

And here we are now, with the recently-announced SteamWorld Build. Only the demo has been made available, but it gives a pretty clear idea of where it's set: Around the same time as Dig 2. There are quakes making bots increasingly worried, and (according to Dig 2) many are even building rockets in anticipation of catastrophe.

SteamWorld Headhunter (???)

Oh yeah, this is an odd one... Headhunter was announced with a short teaser in 2021, but hasn't had much news since. It certainly looks like it's in the Dig/Build era, though, with bots hunting each other for bounties in the western-esque desert. It wasn't mentioned in the SteamWorld Build announcement video, but some of the concept art is in the quick character reel at the start and end of the video, so presumably it's still one of the other three games they mentioned.

The Future

Interestingly, the new games in development are not necessarily being built by the same team. Image & Form, the developers, merged with another Swedish developer, Zoink, to form Thunderful Development. As describedthe first video I linked, the SteamWorld Build announcement, they have several teams working on them, though Brjann Sigurgeirsson, the founder of Image & Form, is the "SteamWorld Universe & Franchise Director" and says he's working with these teams to keep the lore and tone, so presumably the above info will still hold true, though it may not be touched on.

Personally, I'd love to get a Heist 2 just for more of the tactical gameplay, but lore-wise I'm hoping for more info about the "Quest Era", though admittedly I still haven't finished SteamWorld Quest - I fell off it pretty quickly at the time but I'm excited to give it another shot when I finish replaying Heist.