Gameplay consists of running from one of six gun positions to blast the looters’ biplanes out of the sky all the while running to and fro to make repairs on damaged engines, rigs, cargo holds and the zeppelin itself. The game draws on some of the most beloved iconography of the Steampunk lexicon by positioning the player in the shoes of a swarthy zeppelin pilot hellbent on delivering cargo while warding off vicious Sky Pirates who threaten to pillage, plunder and destroy his vessel. Then we arrive at Guns of Icarus from Muse Games.īuilt on the Unity engine that allows 3D gameplay inside a browser, and beloved by indie game developers, Guns of Icarus made its journey to PC gaming from browser-based origins before arriving at Steam as an $8 download.
Many dip their toe in those waters (Warcraft, Final Fantasy, Cogs, Glim) but only in a very superficial way, not in a way that requires the underlying concept of anachronism in order to unfold. Lest I digress into a protracted thesis on the etymology of Steampunk, I will retrain my opening to underline the fact that many games have drawn upon the Steampunk aesthetic to hype their wares, but very few (including Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Myst, Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends, and the Thief franchise) have delivered on their promise to immerse us in its wonders. I countered that this Jules Verne inspired bit of tech could be nothing other than Steampunk in its truest form to which his rebuttal was that Verne predates Steampunk by a century.Īt the crux of the argument was the question of whether or not Steampunk is merely an aesthetic or some sort of new canon unto itself? I would argue that it is a term created by Steve Jackson, creator of the GURPS paper and dice system to encapsulate many sources that include everything from Jules Verne to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Mary Shelley all the way to the wild west robots of Westworld (and its iteration the 1998 film starring Will Smith “ Wild Wild West“), Neil Gaiman’s “ Stardust” or most of Terry Gilliam’s catalog.Ī steampunk sky-pirate zeppelin from the film "Stardust"
I recently shared a debate with a friend who argued that a short film called The Anachronism was not Steampunk solely based on the fact that two children discover a mechanical squid washed up on the beach.
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