Seeing as Image & Form Games’ SteamWorld Dig is a piece of indie game brilliance, we’ve been greatly anticipating the Swedish developer’s new title SteamWorld Heist.

It’d have been easy for them to simply reel off a sequel to Dig. But this is an entirely different game which uses the same graphical and musical themes but wraps them around a new genre and adds in a groovy as heck bespoke song.

SteamWorld Heist

It launched on Nintendo’s 3DS handheld console in late 2015, but has since made its way (after sweeping critical acclaim, we should add) to Steam and all the games consoles.

We also believe it’ll even come out on iOS! This is no bad thing as the turn-based strategy title is an absolute gem.

As Piper Faraday (a woman robot, if you’re wondering), it’s your duty to recruit a team of steam-driven pirates and gather a great big wodge of loot.

To begin with, you’re a bit down on your luck, but as you progress you can quickly level up and acquire new weaponry.

As you invade other ships, SteamWorld Heist turns into a tactical shootout strategy game where you manoeuvre each character around and try and wipe out the enemies and gather the swag.

It offers a real challenge, which makes for quite the thrilling experience on the whole, which is backed up by a rousing soundtrack.

We bleat on about it a lot, but indie developers like Image & Form Games take creative risks which big developers wouldn’t dare even dream of.

It’s a shame as you can see the results here and we feel mainstream developers should be innovating.

Why? Let’s not understate just how good Heist is—this must be regarded as one of the best games of 2016 (even though it sort of came out in 2015, confusingly).

We’ve put in around five hours so far and it’s absolutely riveting and a joy to play, with action-adventure and RPG elements adding in considerable replay value, along with the DLC package which is already available.

SteamWorld Heist is brilliant, in other words. Admittedly, it’s not for everyone. But it’s a game the industry should be celebrating as another wonderfully charming, imaginative, and innovative indie title. It really shows the big developers how it’s done.