By 
Reviewed On: PlayStation 5 (PRO Specifically)
Also Available On: PC and Xbox Series X/S
Price: $39.99
Developer: Storm in a Teacup
Publisher: ESDigital Games
Release Date: April 23rd, 2025
Please note: A review code was provided for this review but does not influence the opinions stated here in any way.
There have been loads of games released in the past week. One of the many titles that launched was a stealth action-adventure indie game called Steel Seed. The developer, Storm in a Teacup, is a smaller studio that has produced a few titles, including Close to the Sun, but this title seems to be their biggest project yet. Unfortunately, going too big at once might have been too much for this team in a few different ways. There are great moments and sections in Steel Seed that I absolutely loved and made me sad to leave the world. There are also moments and weird gameplay design choices that made the game more annoying than fun.
Don’t expect to get a breathtaking story when you play this game. Also, don’t expect something unique and never been told before. You play the game as Zoe, who is the last chance that humanity has to be saved. Her father was sick, and before he passed on, he worked on Zoe to give her a chance to survive by making her part machine. She can communicate with other robots and must work with a friendly robot named Koby in order to complete the game. Early in the game, you will find and meet with an Artificial Intelligence named S4VI, and you will learn what you need to do to save humanity. You have to find four memory fragments scattered throughout the factory and bring them back to S4VI’s area to combine them into one consciousness. The story isn’t unique, as we have seen “last chance to save humanity” many times before. I unfortunately felt a lack of connection with the story, and with basically 0 plot twists, the story isn’t a main reason to play the game.
The gameplay is a lot better than the story, but it isn’t without faults. In order to find the four memory fragments, you have to explore four different sections of the factory. In each of the sections, you will come across many different areas, and most of these areas have robots trying to hunt you down and kill you. In this game, there are multiple ways of going about completing combat encounters. One of the ways is to be fully aggressive, but I learned that most of the time that will get you killed, given how many robots there are. You can heal based on your energy available, but still be careful with enemies. Weapons-wise, you have a sword attack that you can aggressively swing at your enemies, bullets thanks to your robot pal Koby, mines, and a few more tricks and tools I don’t want to fully spoil. There are a few sections in the game, including two encounters and the final boss fight, where this approach is the only approach since you can’t be stealthy. The other approach is being stealthy, and is how I played probably about 80% of the title.
For some of the encounters, you can be very stealthy in terms of sneaking past and around the enemies without even needing to kill them. Personally, I felt that was too boring, so I went with more of a ninja approach of being aggressive while in stealth. You have the ability to attract nearby enemies with a call, and that will cause them to come near you and investigate the area. Below is an example of a section that doesn’t last long because of how I chose to complete it. I was stealthy, but I used the takedowns feature to my advantage to wipe the enemy group out. This won’t work for the more powerful enemies, as it won’t instantly kill them but it will do some damage. Koby will also be able to help you by marking enemies, following their path on the field, and more if you use him. You can also make use of energy fields to hide, use noise attractors, hack enemies to fight on your side for a certain amount of time, and more, to your advantage of getting the jump on the enemy while in the shadows.
Either way you choose to play is up to you, but the game pushes you to choose a stealth approach more than full-out attacks, especially when you have turrets and more powerful machines hunting you. Besides combat encounters, you will also have moments where you need to solve simplistic puzzles, ride around on a wave board in a sea of oil, perform parkour challenges, and more. You can also find different collectibles around the factory, including data pieces, robots flying around that you have to shoot, ember data, and more. When playing the game and defeating enemies, you will gain points, energy, and ability shards to use weapons and special skills once they are unlocked. The normal gun attack Koby has will recharge over time, but the weapons like the mines or mini energy fields to hide in do not, and you need to find ammo from enemies or objects. Throughout the different areas, you will find save points around that will let you do a few different things, such as unlocking new skins, fast travel between different points you find, healing, and upgrading.
These S4VI points are nice for taking breaks in the game, but… there is something that I didn’t like. Every time you want to heal Zoe, all enemies will respawn. This isn’t a souls-like game where you lose your shards when you die, so why is that here? The only reason I can think of is that they want you to be able to grind enemies when exploring, if you want to upgrade your skills. Speaking of, there are skills that you can upgrade and unlock that will help you progress in the title. These skills aren’t just unlocked after a certain point in the game, oh no. Rather, you have to wait for the chance to see the requirements by hitting different points in the story (after each memory, you unlock a few more at a time). Then, once you see them, you have to complete said requirement to be able to purchase the skill. Some of these requirements make you look for collectables (yes, really…), take down enemies using skills or energy, or being fully aggressive with perfect dodges or follow-up attacks.
Personally, this system drives me up a wall with how convoluted some of these requirements are. Kill five enemies within 10 seconds… yeah, that’s just not fun. Or collect all Ember data collectables… absolutely not. They are more of the “broken” abilities and skills but still, that is just not fun for the player. Part of why I am annoyed by it is because there is no map in the game besides the different S4VI points you find, which makes collectible hunting that much harder as a whole. Honestly, there are moments I love about the gameplay in this title, but there are just questionable or downright bad game design choices that I wouldn’t want to see again, and they made me not want to even try for anything more than the main story.
The music, audio design, and voice acting in the game it is a massive mixed experience. Zoe, S4VI, your father, and others are all voiced, and their delivery comes across as a mixed bag for me. There are moments of brilliance or real emotion behind the characters that got me in the feels; however, sometimes it just feels forced or rushed, and is almost cringy. For the music, I personally won’t remember anything from the game in the future, except for the main theme from Porcelain Pill. Honestly, I don’t even remember one audio score or riff in the game, because most of what you are going to hear in the game comes from the audio of robots. Robots are patrolling a lot in the game, so you will hear metal-on-metal footsteps quite a bit. You also hear machines working or flying in the air, entering S4VI save areas, and more in the automated factory. One big issue I have with the game for audio design choices is that Zoe talks too much when she is in combat or stealth. I mean it’s okay for a while, but eventually it does get old.
Thankfully, the art and visuals in the game are pretty damn good. The big artistic problem with the game involves the lighting. In some areas, the game is absolutely breathtaking with how open and vibrant it feels, such as in the image on the right in the gallery below. Other times, you will see good lighting mixed with nice art and backgrounds throughout the factory in a linear feel like the one found in the middle image below. Lastly are the worst times, and it happens more than once, unfortunately. I absolutely hate how dark it is, and you can’t see anything other than a few inches in front of you, as seen in the image on the left. Why they thought moments like that worked, I am not sure. The character models of S4VI, Hogo, Zoe, Koby, and everyone else look good. I believe the environments in the world look good, and overall, I have to say that the art in the game is done really well, and one of my favorite aspects of the title. I unfortunately cannot say the same for the lighting.
The performance and frame rate of the game were pretty solid. The frame rate was smooth, pretty much the entire playthrough. Only once or twice did I have a small noticeable dip in performance. There are no settings in terms of choosing between a higher framerate or fidelity. This is a slight shame in my book because maybe that could have helped in some areas. I got to give it to the team; there were no crashes at all in the game, which I was happy with. The polish of the game was much better than a few AAA games I have played recently. The studio cared about the quality of the title in terms of the framerate and high visual fidelity, as it shows in the final product, and I am thankful for that.
In terms of the final issue I have with the game, it was regarding the difficulty. Yes, some of the gameplay design choices were not great in my book, but the actual difficulty of the title is a whole different issue. For the first 1/3 of the game, I played on normal and thought it was actually pretty fair, where I could easily do it. All of a sudden, the robot AI’s programming seemed to get smarter and found me even when in hiding and killed me in like 2-3 hits. I thought maybe it was just me playing wrong, but when I kept dying over and over, I knew it wasn’t me. I decided to play the rest of the game on story mode, and it made me a lot happier overall playing on it; however, story mode isn’t a cake walk either, as you can die on this too. Honestly, I couldn’t even imagine the final boss fight on Normal or Hard, especially since that took me a few tries on story mode.
Overall, it definitely isn’t a masterpiece in any way, shape, or form. As a whole package, it definitely works, functions, and is fun a lot of the time… but some bumps in the road might be too rough for certain players. The story won’t wow you, but it is serviceable. The gameplay variety is good enough between action, stealth, and platforming. The audio design, music, and voice acting as a whole are okay, while the art and visuals are pretty darn good, minus the lighting issue! The frame rate, performance, and overall quality of this title, from the lack of major bugs or crashes, are really good too! Unfortunately, skills being locked to collectible hunting, which is a bit more tedious than it should be in 2025, is one of the few bigger issues from my perspective. Difficulty spikes are another one. Honestly, I have played quite a few stealth-focused games with action elements and platforming in the past couple of years. Steel Seed isn’t the best I have played, but it also isn’t the worst either. I unfortunately think the price tag of $40 may be a deterrent for many people in a difficult and saturated market, but if you like stealth titles, this might just be for you. Don’t have your expectations too high, and you may be surprised in Steel Seed.
Review Score: 7/10
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