Steel Seed adds a little bit of this and a little bit of that to make an action stealth platformer that doesn’t upend the sci-fi boat
Steel Seed is one of the safest action platformers I’ve played in a while. In an era where developers are spending millions on justifying the latest game engine with hyperrealism, pushing unique ideas to the limits and throwing layers and layers of depth into an experience, I’m actaully happy that this game doesn’t do that. It just is. It’s just an action platformer with a little bit of stealth and style and sci-fi. It puts out a list and checks all the boxes on it, without needing to flip to the back or write in the margins.
It’s What You See Is What You Get, and that’s fine.
Steel Seed has a lot of the genre’s stuff that we already know, but it works together here. Nothing is offensive (except for the visuals which can take a hit even on the higher fidelity levels we can select). It doesn’t try anything abrasively new. Instead it just makes sure that it works. Jumping in 3D is what we expect, attacking is what we expect, sliding in between walls is what we expect is what we expect.
The game sets all of this up by opening on a giant freighter and teaching us how to move through. We’ve awakened in a new body and need to figure out what’s happening. We start by walking, then learning to jump, to slide down oil slick ramps, to climb on YELLOW LEDGES, to use our boosters. It’s a big setting with a clear linear path that even has us going through the typical crouch walk under collapsed walls and some side scrolling race against time for the heck of it.
To reiterate, it’s a platformer with action and some stealth, a lot of movement and motion, and the moments in the genre that we all have played over and over. It’s successful at all the boxes being checked, and that makes it mostly forgettable as a whole (right down to the final antagonist being exactly who and what we think it is).
Steel Seed is a steal action platformer with a sci-fi theme.
This review is based on a Steam code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. Images and video courtesy the publisher. This video first appeared on The SideQuest Live for October 7, 2025.
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