[1] The story of SteamWorld begins in a post-apocalyptic Earth, where human society has fallen into collapse.

SteamWorld Tower Defense tells the story of a huge war between humans and robots for the control of Earth.

In SteamWorld Dig, a robot miner called Rusty inherits his uncle's mine and begins digging all the way to the ruins of an ancient race of electronic bots called the "Vectron", who is reactivated with his arrival.

In SteamWorld Dig 2, a young robot girl called Dorothy who is Rusty's friend, looks for Rusty's whereabouts and discover that he was captured by the Humans, who intend to take control of the Vectron technology to reclaim the surface.

However, the Vectron reactor in their possession overloads, causing a chain reaction that destroys Earth, with Rusty and Dorothy surviving by boarding one among several rockets created to evacuate the bots from the planet.