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Steel Seed
Sci-Fi Tomb Raider - Steel Seed Gamescom Interview
We chatted with Jacopo Vanicore, game designer at Storm in a Teacup, about the hack-and-slash sci-fi adventure that is Steel Seed.
Audio transcription
"Alright, last day of Gamescom 2024. For me, I'm about to leave because trains are a mess this year and I wanted to see more games here at ES Digital, but Steel Seed, I got a little bit of time to see it being played.
It's a hack and a slash, thank you so much for joining us, Jacopo."
"What can you tell us about the main overall gameplay concept here?
Yeah, Steel Seed is an action-adventure, mostly focused on the stealth and the combat parts of the games.
For gameplay reasons, we always call it like a sci-fi Tomb Raider, but with a focus on the melee combat instead of ranged and a huge focus on the companion, Kobe, that it's a really, really huge part of the game and our pillar and it's really, really important both for narrative and in gameplay reasons."
"So, a lot of the times you're gonna strategize and think before taking plans and encountering outposts or enemies and understand which tools or abilities you're going to use.
So, the game has a huge part on to the narrative because we are a studio that takes pride on to creating experiences before games and we made four games before this one, the previous one being Close to the Sun, which was a really, really focused narrative experience with much less gameplay."
"And for that title, it actually worked because it was really about the atmosphere and the experience that you would have playing those games.
But we took it as a personal project, a personal challenge, I mean, to try and get as much as gameplay and have that experience even emerge from the gameplay.
So, that's how Steel Seed was born."
"And we took a lot of inspiration from popular Japanese mangas, like Blam! or Blame!, mostly in the Western, which is a dark sci-fi manga, mostly focused on huge architecture and making the character feel really, really small.
So, that's what you'll see on our environments.
You're a machine with the heart of a human, but everything is not built for you."
"And you'll feel that while playing the game.
Yeah, you know that everything is built for machines and you feel that you're just sneaking around, everything is so huge.
You're not meant to be there, but you're going to be, of course.
Tell us a little bit more about the protagonist and what's going on here."
"Yeah, Zoe, she wakes up only knowing that she's a human and she's a father, Dr. Archer, which is a really, really renowned scientist.
And when she wakes up, she only sees Kobe in front of her, speaking like, beep, boop, boop, like a robot.
And she doesn't actually know anything about what's going on.
She only knows that everything is not familiar."
"She used to like modern stuff and that's all sci-fi.
Where am I?
And Kobe tells her that she needs to follow him to understand more about what happened to his father.
So, it starts this journey inside an underground facility built from robots for robots."
"And we took a lot of time and pride into creating some sort of really grounded and believable geography for this underground facility.
On the first 20 minutes of the game, you're going to notice that there is a huge pillar at the center of the world, which is Savi, a character that you eventually come to know in the game.
And that pillar, which is the sun of the facility for us, for the players, of course, is going to be like the landmark at every stage of the game."
"You're going to go on to different parts of the facility, everyone different from each other, like different biomes, each and every one with all its aspects.
You can learn about them by reading notes around, reading encrypted notes that you can bring to a character, that I can't spoil, that tells you more about what happened to her before.
And you can also understand more about the facility by just looking around."
"Because, of course, there is a lot of machinery and we took a lot of time into creating some living environment that really tells you a story about how they refine the energy of the game, how ships move, what are they doing there.
So, yeah, that's a lot of difference.
It sounds like a really nice introduction to Steel Seed. Are you guys releasing soon?
I don't know if I can say that, but it should be next year."
"All right.
It should be early next year. I don't know if I can say that, though.
Sorry about this. This is a really nice, comprehensive introduction into Steel Seed.
I have to run for the train and for the airport, but I appreciate your time, enjoy the show, good luck with your project and gracias, Jacobo."
Gamescom
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