Gadzooki
Gadzooki
A month ago, Ia wrote about the Steampunk style being applied to computer parts and peripherals. As she said, Steampunk is a “look based on the type of sci-fi/fantasy/speculative fiction literary genre”. As can be expected of any noteworthy genre, Steampunk has made its way into the video gaming industry. Several Steampunk games have become classics and worldwide bestsellers; still, you might not be aware that some of these popular games are Steampunk games.
Here’s a shortlist of Steampunk games that have enthralled countless gamers:
Thief — The Thief franchise (Thief: The Dark Project, Thief II: The Metal Age, Thief: Deadly Shadows) takes place in a Steampunk metropolis where the rogue of a protagonist achieves his goals by sneaking around enemies, dousing torches with water-tipped arrows, and just plain sleuthing around instead of bashing villains’ heads. Well, of course that’s still allowed, but avoided. If you think this makes for boring gameplay, think again. It spiked my adrenalin just as well as Counterstrike did. Very groundbreaking.
Warcraft — Yes, Blizzard’s venerable Warcraft franchise has a touch of Steampunk! Dwarves wielding rifles? Gnomish cities run by steam engines? Steampunk, baby. The World of Warcraft, Warcraft III, and Warcraft II provide one of the best game universes where magic and technology coexist.
Final Fantasy — But of course! Square’s paramount franchise has been long-known to mix the fantastic with the scientific — magic spells, airships, Guardian Forces, spaceships. Of the seemingly-endless train of FF games, Zidane and Garnet’s Final Fantasy IX is the most Steampunk of ‘em all.
Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends — With one of its three races (the Vinci) heavily relying on gunpowder and clockwork, the fantastical successor to the historical Rise of Nations falls neatly into the Steampunk genre. As befitting a magic-and-tech game, Rise of Legends sports a magical civilization called the Alin, as well as the alien race of the Cuotl.
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura — The game’s title says it all, doesnt it? For yours truly, Arcanum is the best Steampunk computer game built to this day, not only because it is brazenly Steampunk, but also because it is one of finest (if underrated) game worlds, ever.
Arcanum is a role-playing game done in Fallout fashion, which shouldn’t come as a surprise, as its developer (Troika Games) was formed by ex-Fallout devs.
You can think of Arcanum as “Industrial Revolution meets Tolkien”, what with steam-powered trains coexisting with tree-dwelling Elves. There is friction between “magick” users and technologists/scientists in the game, and players are better off focusing on one half of the skill tree.
There was talk of an Arcanum sequel, but unfortunately, Troika Games dissolved after publishing only three games (living up to its name, eh?). Ah, at least Fallout 3 is just around the corner!
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28 Responses
Mr Butterscotch
26|Jun|2007Great article – out of those I think that Thief is probably my favourite. What a cracking game.
N.B. I’m back from my holidays!
Phillip Kimpo Jr
26|Jun|2007Thanks
The first time I laid my hands on Thief — a demo — I was amazed at how opposite it was to traditional first-person games (the “shooters”), and how its formula worked as good (or even better!).
That said, I’m biased towards RPGs. Count in the detailed game-world of Arcanum, and you have my favorite Steampunk game
Dave
23|Aug|2007My fav steampunk game was Crimson Skies & its sequel.
Laser Engraved Moleskine Notebooks » Crimson Crux
01|Jul|2008[...] me of my Notable Steampunk Games article at [...]
Miscael
14|Aug|2008Isn’t BioShock a Steampunk game?
A Dude That Knows His Steampunk
30|Nov|2008No, BioShock is not a steampunk game, neither is WoW. Please take it off the list.
Xeigrich
21|Feb|2009BioShock is not steampunk. It is a dieselpunk/genepunk hybrid.
There is very, very little steampunk in any of the Final Fantasy games or in the Warcraft series (especial WoW, which has even less than Warcraft). Puttin a musket in a fantasy game doesn’t make something steampunk, and dwarf machinery can only take the concept of steampunk so far before fizzling out. Only Final Fantasy VI comes close to steampunk. Final Fantasy IX is far from steampunk, especially if you actually play it and find out that the airships run on magical MIST, not steam.
And Fallout 3 could not be any FURTHER from steampunk — I know it’s not on the list but it’s mentioned at the end. It’s a view of a postapocalyptic future as might have been envisioned by Cold War era paranoia. There is ONE steam powered object in the whole game, a weapon. Everything else is nuclear powered or electric powered. It is nukepunk (aka atompunk) with a hint of Teslapunk and if I remember correctly, some dieselpunk as well. Yes, that’s a lot of punks, but Fallout 3 is a complex game.
donny
27|May|2009For the record bioshock is somewhat a steampunk game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk
Xeigrich
13|Jun|2009“For the record,” BioShock is NOT a steampunk game at all. It shares common elements with other works of steampunk, but there are NO valid grounds to prove that BioShock is steampunk itself. The number one point to prove that BioShock is not steampunk: there aren’t any steam-powered machines. The city itself even runs on geothermal power, with everything else inside it being electronic or internal combustion powered.
If anything, BioShock is closer to cyberpunk than steampunk, but in a definitive 1950′s low-tech sort of way.
Oh, and don’t use the wikipedia steampunk article, as someone’s long ago removed the reference to BioShock’s fleeting similarities (and rightly so). That article in particular is unreliable, just check the history.
Jeremy
26|Sep|2009For anyone old enough to remember, the best steampunk game ever, in my opionion, is The Chaos Engine (aka Soldiers of Fortune), from 1993. Best played on an Amiga emulator.
Aladdinsane
31|Oct|2009At Xeigrich, I think you are mistaken as machines in BioShock are powered by steam. How do you hack the machines? By redirecting the steam flow.
John
13|Feb|2010Geothermal power= steam power. How is a whole city run on power generated through steam not steampunk? And since when have these exclusive individual criteria for steampunk been instituted? Bioshock is definitely a steampunk composite.
Xeigrich
14|Feb|2010Jeremy:
That game is so awesome!
Aladdinsane:
You either haven’t played Bioshock yourself, or you haven’t paid attention. That is not steam, it’s LIQUID. The game very clearly states that it is liquid. Just check the hacking tutorial screen and you can see for yourself.
John:
Geothermal power is not steam power. Steam power means that machinery is powered by the force of steam pushing pistons, which create circular motion for wheels and belts. It’s similar to the way the explosions in an internal combustions engine push pistons in any modern vehicle (for comparison).
Geothermal power is harnessed for the purpose of generating electricity. If you are powering your machinery with electricity, that’s neither steam power nor Steampunk.
To sum up my point, it doesn’t make a bit of difference how you’re generating electricity, be it steam, flowing water, combustion, or nuclear material, so long as the machines are running on electricity — then it’s not Steampunk. In Bioshock, the machines all run on internal combustion engines or electricity. Sure, you can have electricity and internal combustion in a Steampunk world, but without the steam powered machines and anachronism you just can’t claim something’s Steampunk because it strikes your fancy.
Calling a city Steampunk just because its electricity comes from geothermal steam heat makes as much sense as saying a city is Cyberpunk just because there’s a nuclear reactor nearby.
Adumb sigal
05|Mar|2010Dark Cloud 2 was a tedious PS2 game but meets the criteria
Aladdinsane
05|Mar|2010I still think that bioshock has a a steampunk feel to it. High pressurised steam would be in the liquid state and I can’t really think of an alternative to water as the liquid used.
We should discount bioshock 2 as cannon, because bioshock 2 is no more than arse gravy.
Downcount
13|Mar|2010Bioshock DOES have a similar feel, but is kind of in it’s own class. i would say part dieselpunk-ish, part biopunk. what people mistake as steampunk in it is just retro-futrism, but awesome either way. Also, in the PC version, it does say the liquid in the hacking machines is a liquid conductive metal, like mercury but glowing blue.
Konner
28|Apr|2010Well Bioshock should have a similar feel to steampunk, the creator of Bioshock said that the game was heavily influenced by steampunk!
Celia
31|May|2010I’d like to recommend a XBox Live Arcade Game: Aqua – Naval Warfare.
For more information visit the official website: http://www.aqua-the-game.com/
Have fun!
whatever
10|Jun|2010at xeigrich: Steampunk is not based on whether electricity is involved.There is no steampunk law that says that electricity can’t be present or used. Your definition would make almost nothing steampunk. The only real qualifier is that steampower is still widely used, not the only thing present. And yes, Bioshock has steam powered objects. The geothermal power is super heated water and STEAM rising from the earth, and again, it doesn’t matter that it is used to generate electricity. I have no idea where you got that idea in your head.
Xeigrich
10|Jun|2010At “whatever”:
My point still stands. You say yourself that the only qualifier for steampunk is that steampower is still “widely” used, but a singular assumed example of geothermal power generating electricity has nothing to do with steam, it’s HEAT that is important. And if your only example of “steam” in Bioshock is the geothermal plant providing electricity to the city, you’re only helping me prove my point that there isn’t any definite steam-powered machinery portrayed in Bioshock.
Do a little research on geothermal power. Geothermal energy is not the same thing as a hydrothermal vent (hot water coming out of a crack in the ocean floor). It’s not the hot water that is important, it’s the heat that makes that water hot. This requires a Heat Engine to produce mechanical or electrical energy, and yes, a steam engine is one type of heat engine, but so are internal combustion (gasoline and Diesel) engines. You can’t just assume that the heat engines in Bioshock are steam engines, especially with obvious examples of internal combustion and abundant electrical devices present in the game (the flying turrets, for one).
Also, I never said electricity can’t be present, but when there is no visible, undeniable steam power in an environment rampant with electric lights, televisions, radios, etc., then the only logical conclusion is that, well, it’s not steampunk. It’s like how you can’t call a book a murder mystery novel if there’s no murder mystery in it. If someone dies and someone is curious about it, that’s just a detail — characters die in a lot of books — but unless a relative amount of focus is put on that death and its investigation, then there is no need to add on that particular label.
havocovah
01|Aug|2010Wow, of all the different sorts of arrogant egotistical fundies I’ve encountered, I never thought I’d run into a steampunk fundie.
I mean we’re all used to those religious fundies with their “my way or Hell’s highway” attitudes, but that’s religion. You kind of expect to find soapbox shouting morons there.
But at least Xeigrich has shown us that fundeism can exist for just about anything.
Good thing we know how deal with fundies though.
Dear Xeigrich: Thank you for your unsolicited input. We’ll be sure to give your uneducated and irrelevant opinions on the subject all the consideration they deserve.
Xeigrich
02|Aug|2010And our friend havocovah here has proven that, yes, you can flame anyone about anything on the Internet and sarcasm is always useful. I think my “uneducated and irrelevant opinions” on Steampunk are a bit more solicited than your off-topic rant.
The only reason I have this “fundie” attitude is because I don’t want to see something like Steampunk degrade into the same blather that we always get when something grows in popularity. That’s how we end up with “steampunk” games like Damnation that start out looking great, but turn into cookie cutter action shooters devoid of all the beautiful inspiration that originally went into them. If you think my approach is wrong that’s one thing, but the insults are unnecessary.
dagger
25|Sep|2010Final Fantasy IX is defiantly steampunk. The whole entire game is focused around “The Mist” which if you take another look at it, its basically another term for steam. And on top of that, all of the machinery is based on the “The Mist”. May you can call it post-steampunk, but I think that it still fits in the category.
Anders
02|Dec|2010Fallout 3 is not steampunk but the expansion “the pitt” has a little bit of steampunk art… for example the filtration mask is a complete copy of a mask hanhing in the steampunk museum in UK
AladdinSaene
02|Dec|2010I guess it just goes to show that steampunk isn’t an exact thing. I suppose a lot of these examples have a steampunk feel to them without necessarily being attached to the idea of steam engines. The general feel of steampunk seems to me a mechanical object that almost looks ramshackle and its mechanical parts whacky and obvious. There are many examples of things that share this theme, fallout 3 was mentioned and I would say that even the Orks of Warhammer 40k share this theme somewhat.
Greggykill
17|Jan|2011Lets stop all this sense less fighting were all steampunk fans here no need to hate!
Alright I just want to say all fallout games are atom-punk, post-apocalyptic, and retro futuristic not steampunk
Bioshock I’m not sure but I would type cast it as diesel-punk or maybe biopunk. but the new one coming out Bioshock Infinate might be steam punk- fingers crossed.
Ken
27|Mar|2011Man, I really wish Steampunk was more heavily delved into in popular media.
There are plenty of backwater books and book series out there, even a few popular ones (Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld + sequels), but hunting down steampunk videogames or movies is like trying to find… well, it’s like trying to find steampunk videogames or movies in popular media.
And it doesn’t help that all the steampunk material that anyone knows about is bad. Damnation failed miserably, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, while kickass in a fun way, was still a bad movie.
I’m gonna have to try out Arcanum, though. You can get it on Good Old Games for six bucks or something… why the hell not?
William
20|May|2011Not bad but I prefer Starcraft myself
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