Steel Seed is a game of contrasts. Its stunning environmental design and ambitious premise are somewhat undermined by predictable storytelling and technical limitations
Steel Seed presents an intriguing vision of Earth's distant future, where humanity has vanished and machines reign supreme. While its ambitious scope and gorgeous environments show potential, several technical and narrative shortcomings prevent it from fully realizing its promise.
The game casts you as Zoe, who awakens thousands of years in the future to find herself housed in a cybernetic body. Earth has become a mechanical wasteland ruled by artificial intelligence, with humanity apparently extinct. Your mission is to restore your father's consciousness, scattered across four distant nodes, in hopes of reviving the human race.
While this premise holds immense potential for exploring themes of isolation, existential dread, and what it means to be human, the narrative unfortunately falls short in its execution. Zoe's relatively blasé reaction to her extraordinary circumstances - waking up millennia later in an artificial body to find humanity extinct - feels jarring and undermines the gravity of the situation. The writing often opts for quippy dialogue over any meaningful character development, making it difficult to connect emotionally with Zoe's journey.
Throughout this adventure you have a companion, Koby, a drone that communicates through R2-D2-style beeps and boops. Koby proves useful for gameplay purposes, as you can fly as him around the world, mark enemies, scavenge chests and shoot buttons to activate paths, but the one-sided conversations between Zoe and him feel forced and add little to the story. Plus the overarching plot follows very predictable beats, with plot twists that seasoned players will likely see coming well in advance.
Steel Seed's core gameplay loop draws heavy inspiration from recent action-adventure titles like Jedi Survivor, particularly in its movement mechanics. Wall-running, climbing, and traversal feel familiar, though not quite as expansive or polished as its obvious influences. Zoe wields a "glitch sword" that serves as the game's primary weapon, useful for both stealth takedowns and direct combat.
The combat system is straightforward but functional. One-on-one encounters can be easily managed through basic attack combinations, though facing multiple enemies presents a significant challenge that encourages stealth approaches. The game clearly wants you to embrace its stealth mechanics, which involve hiding in cover or glitch-infused tall grass, distracting enemies, and executing silent takedowns.
The enemy AI doesn't help at all as it exhibits notable limitations, particularly in vertical awareness. Enemies struggle with basic pathfinding when you exploit height advantages, often standing confused when they can't find a direct route to you. And after a couple of seconds after you get out of their sight, they lose their alert status and go back to their patrol route.
The stealth system works well enough on a very basic level but lacks the depth and sophistication of more dedicated stealth titles. Sure, you have some tools like you can create distractions or glitched tall grass wherever you want, if you can afford it, but that doesn't really change much. Maybe, if you play this on the hard difficulty mode, you'll have to rely more on these tools, but I don't think that's a good way to go.
Despite some souls-like elements in its presentation, Steel Seed is decidedly more straightforward in its progression. The game's structure follows a relatively linear pattern as you explore the four distinct biomes, alternating between platforming sequences and combat arenas. While this could feel repetitive, the highlight comes in the form of frequent escape sequences. These dynamic chase scenes often feature a massive robot in the background that yeets stuff towards Zoe as you run through crumbling environments, accompanied by an energetic soundtrack that effectively enhances the tension.
The four distinct biomes are connected linearly rather than forming an interconnected world with shortcuts and backtracking opportunities. Again, this is not a souls-like game, so don't expect any of that. There's also a skill tree system that allows you to unlock additional abilities and upgrade options for Koby like different ammo types for his (not-so-useful) cannon, but again, you don't really need to unlock any of them to beat the game. Then there's the single boss fight in the game that feels underwhelming and somewhat out of place, suggesting that the development team's strengths lay more in creating cool environments than traditional boss encounters.
Speaking of cool environments, the environmental design in Steel Seed deserves special recognition and I think is the game's strongest point. Each biome presents a distinct and visually striking interpretation of a machine-dominated world. The first area particularly impresses with its massive industrial architecture that echoes like BLAME!'s cyberpunk aesthetic. The scale and detail of these environments create a genuine sense of awe and help sell the game's post-human setting. That fourth biome? It's just fantastic, with a beautiful blend of nature and technology and well, it it's a feast for your eyes. Kudos to the environmental artists as they have fricking nailed it!
Unfortunately though, these visual achievements come at a technical cost. Frame rate issues consistently plague the experience, with frequent drops below 60fps that can impact both combat and platforming sections. While not game-breaking, these performance issues detract from the overall experience and highlight the game's technical limitations. So if you are playing this on a PS5, know that you might have to deal with some pretty bad frame rate drops.
Steel Seed is a game of contrasts. Its stunning environmental design and ambitious premise are somewhat undermined by predictable storytelling and technical limitations. The core gameplay mechanics, while functional, rarely rises above being competent imitations of better-known titles. The escape sequences provide genuine highlights that show what the game can achieve when playing to its strengths and I wish the rest of the game could follow that example.
Still, despite its flaws, there's an earnest attempt here to create something meaningful within the constraints of a smaller development team. If you can look past its technical issues and narrative shortcomings, you will find an adequate action-adventure title with moments of genuine visual splendor. In the end, Steel Seed offers enough entertainment value to warrant attention from fans of post-apocalyptic science fiction and stealth-action games. Thanks for reading!
The game was reviewed on a PS5 via a code provided by the publisher. Steel Seed is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
