The SteamWorld series has a real chronology, and it is not the release order.
One game is a side-story that runs inside another. One is set roughly two centuries early. And one of them quietly tells you that the friendly robot guiding your town is the villain of the whole franchise.
Here is the order things actually happen.
Before the games: how the world begins
In the real world’s late 1790s to early 1800s, history runs normally until Charles Babbage not only designs the Analytical Machine but successfully builds it.
That single divergence produces the Steambots. Humans, no longer needing to work, grow lazy and devolve into the Shiners — the shambling human enemies you fight throughout the series. The Steambots build settlements, and the wildlife mutates.
Everything in the franchise grows from that one change.
1. SteamWorld Tower Defense (2010)
The earliest point in the timeline. A Steambot settlement defends its gold mines from Shiners who are raiding for the metal.
That reframes the game entirely: the humans you are shooting are not an invading army in a vacuum. They are the descendants of the species that made you, reduced to raiders.
2. SteamWorld Dig (2013)
Rusty receives a letter from his uncle and travels to Tumbleton. The ground collapses before he reaches town and he falls into a cavern, where he meets Dorothy McCrank and finds the body of Uncle Joe.
He inherits the mine, revives the town’s economy by trading ore, and digs through Archaea, the Old World and Vectron — finding upgrades apparently left for him by Joe along the way.
At the bottom he meets Voltbot, who offers him assimilation into a perfect machine. Rusty refuses, destroys the cooling fans, and escapes the collapse of Vectron — then disappears. Tumbleton never learns what happened to him.
3. SteamWorld Dig 2 (2017)
Dorothy goes looking for Rusty after a traveller reports seeing him at El Machino. An earthquake drops her into an underground temple, where she frees a rude Vectron Sprite she names Fen.
The pair are directed by a Shiner named Rosie to destroy three Vectron stabilisers, believing they are causing the earthquakes. They fight the Doomsday Cultists and the Great Prophet at the Temple of the Great Destroyer, then destroy the remaining stabilisers.
Then the twist lands: Rosie was using them. She is powering her mech with Rusty, and the stabilisers were Vectron technology she wanted gone. Dorothy defeats her, carries Rusty out, and the Vectron reactor overloads, destroying Earth. The Steambots evacuate on rockets.
4. SteamWorld Build (2023) — running inside Dig 2
This is the placement almost nobody expects.
Build is a side-story that occurs during Dig 2. While Dorothy is digging below, a separate group of Steambot settlers is building a mining town above, guided by a mysterious robot called Core, who claims the old mine holds ruins that will let them escape the coming cataclysm.
That cataclysm is the reactor overload happening in Dig 2.
And Core is part of the Vectron Hivemind. Once the rocket is complete, Core reveals itself and infiltrates the rocket’s systems while the town’s inhabitants are evacuated.
So the game’s helpful tutorial voice is the antagonist of the series, and the “escape” you spend twenty hours building is compromised before it launches. If you have played Build and found the ending abrupt, this is why — the ending is not in Build. It is in the next game’s premise.
5. SteamWorld Heist (2015)
After Earth’s destruction. The Steambots spread into space and try to rebuild.
The Royalists (or Royal Space Force) set out to reconnect the shattered world with enormous chains. Over time the Dieselbots take over and push the Steambots out. Two of them — Captain Piper Faraday and Wonky — leave over what they were being asked to transport, and become pirates.
Piper’s crew meets the Scrappers, undead space pirates who are stealing not just cargo but the Cowbots themselves, and recruits Sally Bolt and Valentine Butterbolt to fight back.
6. SteamWorld Heist II (2024)
Piper’s crew continues on the Great Sea, hunting the source of a rust plague that is corroding Steambots from the inside. The class system is now weapon-based rather than fixed.
Where Quest fits
SteamWorld Quest is set loosely in the universe, framed as a pseudo-medieval fantasy card RPG. It shares the aesthetic and some characters but does not sit on the Dig-to-Heist spine. Treat it as a legend told in this world rather than an event in it.
And Headhunter
Announced in 2021, an on-hold 3D co-op entry with no confirmed place in the timeline. Since it never released, it contributes nothing to canon.
The short version
| Order | Game | When |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tower Defense | Robot settlements vs Shiner raids |
| 2 | Dig | Rusty, Tumbleton, Voltbot |
| 3 | Dig 2 | Dorothy, Rosie, Earth destroyed — Build runs concurrently |
| 4 | Heist | Space, Royalists, Piper’s crew |
| 5 | Heist II | The Great Sea, the rust plague |
| — | Quest | Loose fantasy framing, off the spine |
The three things worth knowing: Build happens during Dig 2, Core is Vectron, and the Shiners are devolved humans rather than monsters.
Related guides
- Series order guide — release order versus this chronology
- SteamWorld Dig guide — where the story starts properly
- Dig 2 walkthrough — the events Build runs alongside
- SteamWorld Build guide — the compromised escape
- SteamWorld Heist guide — the space era
- SteamWorld games ranked — which of them to actually play