Image & Form Games is hoping the community will steampower its latest Ambassador Challenge contest with enthusiasm for the SteamWorld universe.
The studio’s latest challenge is to devise a robot mining proverb for the characters in SteamWorld Dig 2, which is slated to launch later this year as a Nintendo Switch exclusive. It’s the second contest held for the upcoming game, and the first one last month attracted nearly 400 submissions from fans. Image & Form has hosted a number of these Ambassador Challenges for their previous titles. The first one ever was in April 2015 for SteamWorld Heist, a sequel to SteamWorld Dig from 2013. Each time, the studio invites fans to submit content, ranging from designing a hat for a DLC pack to brainstorming up a tagline.
Community involvement has become increasingly important to game developers, whether that’s live feedback during Steam Early Access (a way to play an unfinished game that’s still in development) or contests such as the ones hosted by Image & Form. Other games, such as Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2, also use community challenges to engage players as a type of new content.
SteamWorld Dig 2, like the first SteamWorld Dig, is an action-adventure platformer with a playful spaghetti Western-meets-steampunk aesthetic. The mechanics are similar to the first SteamWorld Dig, which featured a heavy emphasis on harvesting ore to create platforms and mining a path through the subterranean environment with a pickaxe. A main difference, however, is that the latest installment won’t have a procedurally generated world.
As in previous Ambassador Challenges, the contest winner’s submission will be featured in-game. They will also receive free copies of all SteamWorld games as well as behind-the-scenes info on SteamWorld Dig 2.