Steel Seed

Steel Seed is a stealth action game with a small handful of shiny chrome moments to find, but they are buried under a whole lot of mediocrity and rust.

Zoe may be the chosen one destined to save the world, but the game around her never really feels like it's convinced of it — or itself. And if you can’t persuade yourself of the story you’re telling, it’s damn hard to convince anyone else.

Steel Seed may not be the most original game around, but its action-adventure formula serves as a solid tribute to the Uncharted and Star Wars Jedi series, offering an intriguing story and setting, engaging traversal and stealth mechanics, and impressive world design that captures the scale of a world overtaken by machines. Unfortunately, the lack of originality, along with a general lack of depth, does impact the experience, as the gameplay starts to feel repetitive a few hours in. Still, Zoe’s journey is one worth taking for those seeking an experience in the vein of Naughty Dog’s beloved dormant franchise.

Steel Seed is a beautiful and fun addition to the stealth action-adventure genre but doesn't fully deliver on some of its best ideas.

Steel Seed doesn't do anything particularly new, but it does recreate tried and true gameplay and traversal elements and wraps it in a stunning presentation. I have trouble with the final act as I think it falls a bit short of the promise the first two acts build up to, but overall the complete package is a pretty good game marked by solid mechanics and progression. It settles into a core loop but encourages you to explore options to play that out, and for the most part offers a pretty cool narrative wrapping neat ideas into a gorgeous bit of world building.

Steel Seed is the ambitions and successful product of an Italian indie developer which comes as a welcome surprise.

While Storm in a Teacup's about-face from mechanical simplicity is audacious, Steel Seed is something I'm more compelled to admire than recommend.

Steel Seed’s ambitious vision never fully coalesces. While its thought-provoking sci-fi narrative, solid art design, and creative gameplay concepts show promise, repetitive combat, technical hiccups, and uneven pacing drag the experience down. Best suited for AI-fiction enthusiasts, though action-seekers may find it lacking. Ultimately, a diamond in the rough is worth playing, but it needs polish to shine.

Steel Seed is like the cold touch of an alien planet—you don’t expect it to move you, but something inside you awakens. If you love sci-fi that’s not just about technology, but about the very question of who we are, you’ll find what you’re looking for here. The game has its flaws, but it also has a soul—encoded deep within its circuits and the reflections of metal. It’s a title that won’t appeal to everyone, but those who fall in love with it will immerse themselves in it completely. And then they’ll spend a long time pondering everything Steel Seed actually said between the lines.

A lacklustre story is propped up by fun, if unoriginal, stealth gameplay, with some fun nods back to the ‘good old days’ of action platformers. A few glitches and crashes here and there didn’t help, but it hits the intended points and doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not.