Warning: Extended paragraphed rant with spoilers for the entire Steamworld series
It took me 4 repeated attempts to play this game with it boring me before completion before I finally finished it.

Thunderful took one long look at the worldbuilding and storytelling of the Steamworld games, then went "yeah let's do dig 2 again" and made the same plot but worse. The characters are flat boring stereotypes that love missing obvious shit, the 4 events of the story barely register as happening given they don't affect anything that's going on, the lore of this game actively makes the pre-existing lore worse, and every plot element feels like a checkbox on a list of things to include by someone not interested in their work (why does the crazy bot sacrifice himself, we learnt nothing about that character, he literally didn't even do anything THEY'RE ON A ROCKET IN SPACE WHILE THE PLANET EXPLODES).

Speaking of not interested in the work, this game reeks of corporate oversight or quick cash scheme (because of/despite the baffling amount of 'content' in there). Even before the game released seeing "NEW Interview with (some director) behind Steamworld Build" featuring the same uninteresting interviewer asking similar non-descriptive questions spammed from every other Steamworld game page on steam almost got me to not buy the game I was already going to buy (because I just really like the Steamworld games). Plus adding on that now the most I've heard about the game is another holiday visual update or minor map addition is all I hear about it, it seems like the marketing for the game was just that in order to increase sales before people actually learn exactly how bad the game is. Now the classic 'Oh my god guys Vectron was evil?!???' is getting stale, especially when executed this blindingly obviously, and the steambot civilisation rarely shown before the planet exploded seems so much worse now (list below). Also, having seen the aristocrat 'character arc' and disinterested design philosophy, it seems like Thunderful wants to use Image & Form to simply maximise profit at the expense of everyone who had worked or is working on this series (I don't wanna stoop to their level and say franchise, it feels wrong).

And this glaring intent is only reinforced by the gameplay, encouraging segregation by class and expendable workers while simplifying every interaction down to either obvious handholding in designing your city or a waiting simulator (the late game balance stinks, the last mission is just wait for rocket fuel to be made which took like 10 minutes on 2x speed). I already don't like city sims, but I do appreciate Thunderful keeping up with Steamworld's lack of trend chasing, but then again it doesn't help this game's lack of vision and interest.

Speaking of vision and interest, the art direction avoids those two words like the plague. Everything is either too cartoony to be recognisable or too one-note to matter. The other Steamworld games have a very muted cartoon high-quality-flash-game style to lean into the grungy post-steampunk aesthetic in these apocalyptic scenarios while contrasting against the clean chromatic modern (pre-spiderverse) digitally animated style of Vectron. Steamworld Quest has a more cartoony artstyle due to it literally being a storybook told to a character's child in universe and the story following a textbook hero's journey. Why is this game following the same apocalyptic scenario as Steamworld Dig 2 with another Vectron bot, but looking more marketable and brand-safe than ever?

And despite these qualities, it's not entirely worthless in all aspects. I had some fun figuring out layouts in the actively jagged and uneven landscape, the mining wasn't terrible (despite the same game series doing better), and there was clearly a lot of effort put in the game which does increase my enjoyment. However I cannot say I'm looking forward to Steamworld Headhunters (if it's even still being made) anymore, as Thunderful has very clearly shown they don't care about making good games in Steamworld, just more product.

List of things this game introduced that makes no sense:
- Why are the steambots on wagons moving home?
- - What happened to their previous home?
- - Why is a piece of Vectron just chilling with them?
- - - It was introduced in Heist that Vectron made it their mission to destroy the steambots, so why let so many create civilisation especially when the core can just escape to the depths and raise another vectron army (or even do so immediately after the bots find the vectron machines in the bottom layer)?
- Why are there so many steambots to the point they're expendable?
- - It was introduced in the Dig games that there aren't many steambots around, so where did these ones come from?
- Why doesn't anyone just get rid of the Aristocracy? They keep on dying or being denied resources (in story) from this one aristocrat bot being selfish, so why not do something about it in this mostly lawless world?
- What was that ending? Speedrun the last days of the planet before it explodes (seemingly out of nowhere if you haven't played Dig 2) just to immediately have the refugees be transported across the stars without any explanation. Why?
- - If that's supposed to be a cliffhanger, why not hint at Vectron's future plans then?
- - Also, what's the explanation for how this leads to Heist then?
- - - Did this hijacked rocket then become the Royalists despite the Vectron core being a prisoner of the Royalists, unlike how the end of this game presents it?
- - - Are they supposed be somewhere deeper in space than anywhere in Heist, and if so then why was a large portion of Vectron disconnected from their main network and hiding behind the moon?
- - - When did that rocket get the ability to go lightspeed when no other steambot rocket has that an unknown amount of years later in Heist?
- I know I've already said this, but why did crazy bot sacrifice himself?
- - What was his plan?
- - What was his talk of getting hope? In what aspect did you lose hope before now? When was this established cause I think I might've missed it
- - - Furthermore, why didn't the crazy bot regain his memories after first hearing the Old Signal, especially since he was in the civilisation that sent the Old Signal?
- Why can only Astrid hear the Old Signal?
- - Obviously the core was lying about the Old Signal being hereditary given the Old Signal warns you about this core, so why only Astrid?
- - Why don't the other bots hear the Old Signal? All steambots are shown to have the same capabilities with minor modifications, but Jack never mentions giving her a unique antenna for these signals so she mustn't have any capability the other bots don't

I wrote this immediately after finishing the game. And just given by how many weird ass questions I had, I doubt the writing staff cared much about how any of their work made sense for this game. Absolutely dreadful across the board (mostly) and I will be pretending this game does not exist in the future, though I wish I didn't have to