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)
Other fun things that didn't fit into a post about the timeline:
The reason they wanted to make SteamWorld games a different genre every time was that prior to SteamWorld Tower Defense, they had been working on mine but new entries in a single edutainment series for almost a decade.
After SteamWorld Heist came out, there was a "leak" for a game called SteamWorld Quest from an application to an EU fund. Later, Dig 2 was announced, and then revealed that "SteamWorld Quest" was just their code name for Dig 2, not wanting the sequel to be leaked by the application. The title "Quest" title was chosen because it was so generic it could mean anything. So it's pretty funny that it ended up being the actual title for the game after Dig 2.
