22 Responses

1. Mr Butterscotch

   26|Jun|2007

   Great article – out of those I think that Thief is probably my favourite. What a cracking game.

   N.B. I’m back from my holidays!

2. Phillip Kimpo Jr

   26|Jun|2007

   Thanks 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

3. Dave

   23|Aug|2007

   My fav steampunk game was Crimson Skies & its sequel.

4. Laser Engraved Moleskine Notebooks » Crimson Crux

   01|Jul|2008

   [...] me of my Notable Steampunk Games article at [...]

5. Miscael

   14|Aug|2008

   Isn’t BioShock a Steampunk game?

6. A Dude That Knows His Steampunk

   30|Nov|2008

   No, BioShock is not a steampunk game, neither is WoW. Please take it off the list.

7. Xeigrich

   21|Feb|2009

   BioShock 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.

8. donny

   27|May|2009

   For the record bioshock is somewhat a steampunk game.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk

9. 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.

10. Jeremy

    26|Sep|2009

    For 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.

11. Aladdinsane

    31|Oct|2009

    At 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.

12. John

    13|Feb|2010

    Geothermal 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.

13. Xeigrich

    14|Feb|2010

    Jeremy:
    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.

14. Adumb sigal

    05|Mar|2010

    Dark Cloud 2 was a tedious PS2 game but meets the criteria

15. Aladdinsane

    05|Mar|2010

    I 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.

16. Downcount

    13|Mar|2010

    Bioshock 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.

17. Konner

    28|Apr|2010

    Well Bioshock should have a similar feel to steampunk, the creator of Bioshock said that the game was heavily influenced by steampunk!

18. Celia

    31|May|2010

    I’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!

19. whatever

    10|Jun|2010

    at 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.

20. Xeigrich

    10|Jun|2010

    At “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.

21. havocovah

    01|Aug|2010

    Wow, 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.

22. Xeigrich

    02|Aug|2010

    And 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.