Steel Seed is an upcoming action-adventure game with general amounts of stealth and platforming sections. Set in a dark sci-fi world, players take on the role of Zoe on an epic journey in search of her father inside an underground facility overrun by AIs. Fortunately for our heroine, she is not alone. Koby, a drone, will accompany her throughout this journey.
The Steam demo covers the tutorial stage, mostly the traversal sections, with light combat and stealth sections, to give us a general idea of what we can expect in the full release. There is some light sprinkling of the story mixed in, but it is focused more on the setting than anything else.
The demo starts with a short cutscene of Zoe getting prepped for a medical procedure. Dr. Archer, Zoe’s father, also makes a brief appearance. We are then shown a montage of Zoe’s body getting reassembled in a different place. A friendly drone named Koby wakes her from slumber. Confused, Zoe’s first instinct is to find her father. This marks the proper beginning to Zoe’s journey in this new dark sci-fi world.
I haven’t been able to get a grasp of Zoe’s personality based on the demo. All I know is that her new body doesn’t bother her too much. I was half-expecting her to freak out, much like how Officer Murphy, from the RoboCop reboot, found out he no longer had a human body. Other than that, I was also expecting something more from Zoe’s “hair”. I can’t look at it and not compare it to Protoss nerve cords. I’m sorry.
Our drone friend Koby seems to be our guide. From this brief introduction, I have a feeling that it’ll serve a function similar to BD-1, from Jedi Fallen Order. It can also support us in combat in the same way B2’s drone buddy from Nier Automata helps us out.
The combat is your typical action-adventure fare. You have a light attack and a heavy attack. You are also able to sidestep and dodge-roll on command. I wasn’t entirely impressed with the combat in this demo. The animations seem stiff, despite Zoe’s blade looking fancy with each attack. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and hope that combat gets better as we upgrade our offensive skills. Stealth seems to play a large part in the game. I don’t know if that’s because facing multiple enemies will cause an issue. Facing three grunts didn’t seem difficult, however.
If you’ve played PlayStation games with platforming, like those in God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn, then know that edges with yellow light bars serve as climbable edges. At least they didn’t go with the yellow paint this time around. Additionally, the double jump ability Zoe starts with should make getting to hard-to-reach areas a breeze. That’ll also mean that there will be times when extended jumps will be necessary.
As far as expectations go, I would like to know more about the world. So far, the setting feels like Nier: Automata if it took place on a far future Earth, as seen in The Matrix movies. I’d also like to know the deal with Zoe’s body. Are we looking at a Soma situation with her human memories being transferred to a new body, or something darker? I guess we’ll find out in a couple of weeks.
My biggest concern so far is what combat is going to look like on release. The demo only had three encounters, two of which were tutorials. There was one obligatory combat tutorial and the other a stealth tutorial. The last encounter is against multiple enemies and can be finished entirely through stealth. None of the moves shown in the trailers are doable in the demo. I assume they are unlocked further on, much like how the glide and hover ability will eventually unlock.
Another concern I have is with how the PC version will look on launch. Admittedly, I’ve seen the PlayStation gameplay showcase, and I can confidently say that the visuals are sharper, and the lighting is arguably better. I was running the demo on the highest graphic setting, if you should know. I truly hope that the PC version will look its best. However, experience has taught me that console-targeted titles generally do not look their best on PC launch day.
The Steel Seed demo felt more like a vertical slice than an actual demo. It showed a very thin portion of the game without going much into detail. I, at least, got an idea of the general gameplay, and that’ll have to do for now.
Steel Seed is set to release on April 10th, 2025, on PlayStation, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch, and PC (via Steam).
