Image & Form Shares About How SteamWorld Quest Was Conceived, Release Plans & More

Image & Form’s Brjánn Sigurgeirsson has revealed more interesting tidbits about the development of SteamWorld Quest.

In a new interview with Nintendo Life, the CEO spoke briefly about the how the game started, and where it takes place in the series timeline. Also, Sigurgeirsson touched on when the game would likely see release – citing that it will launch ‘sooner’ than fans expect!

Check out some snippets of the interview below:

Q: Where did the idea for SteamWorld Quest come from, and how long has the game been in development so far?

Well, SteamWorld Quest started as a pitch from Peter Johansson, the director of the game. While making SteamWorld Dig 2 we decided to do an internal game pitching round for coming title(s), where everyone got to pitch one or more game ideas to the rest of the studio. The plan was that we’d then get together and pick one (or more) for subsequent development. That probably sounds like a marvellous idea and a great exercise in democracy, but it was a lot harder than we expected; not to come up with ideas, but rather to pick the winners. We hadn’t set up the criteria properly beforehand and it rather became a great lesson in humility and guilty feelings towards all the runner-up ideas. Nevertheless, SteamWorld Quest perhaps wouldn’t have been born without the process.

For a good while, important aspects of the game were quite different than they are now, but then we had one of our proud – internally at least – moments: a marathon meeting where we decided to chuck out what wasn’t working and instead make a truly epic game. We had similar moments while making the original SteamWorld Dig and SteamWorld Heist. Not very surprisingly, making epic games is typically better than keeping stuff that doesn’t work very well.

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Q: This new game is set in what appears to be a different time period to previous SteamWorld games. How does Quest tie in with the rest of the series chronologically?

It does tie in with the rest, believe it or not. There’s been some truly brilliant work in the last few months on the SteamWorld lore front, and Quest expands on it. I won’t give any of it away here, and Quest itself contains just enough hints to keep everyone speculating what this world is about. We won’t be running out of Steam(World) anytime soon. It’s a wonderful and remarkable place.

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Q: You’ve given the game a release window of 2019 – can you tell us if this will be sooner rather than later this year?

Since it’s one of the best games you’ll play this year, it will certainly be later than you want. But it will also probably be sooner than you think.

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Q: Will Quest remain exclusive to the Switch, or do you plan to bring it to other platforms?

Right now we’re concentrating on the Switch – as mentioned in Nintendo’s Indie Highlights showreel in January, SteamWorld Quest is coming to Nintendo Switch first. We may decide to bring it to other platforms later. But first things first.