Exclusive Preview of City of Steam - Your chance to play a mechanical Dwarf!

There are only so many traditional fantasy based MMO's that one man can stomach. When you're walking through a magical Eleven forest for the 24th time, you can start to suffer from some real Tolkien related fatigue.
Enter "City of Steam".
This free to play browser based MMO is going to take your Elves, your Dwarves and your medieval themed fantasy world, and process them in a giant, hissing piece of brass decorated machinery, spitting out a distinct steampunk setting, where the world is one giant machine and one of the base elements is rust (earth is so quaint).

Trains and airships. This isn't your average Lord of the Rings fantasy world

City of Steam is being developed by the China based "Mechanist Games" and has been in development for a couple of years.
I've had a chance to interview lead designer David Lindsay and Ian Morgenheim, who has been part of the process of creating the RPG books that the game is based on.

Q: First off, can you tell us about how you came up with the background for City of Steam?

A: City of Steam is actually the third iteration of the a setting that began as simply "Industrial Age Fantasy". That first version was a... bloated unwieldy beast of a thing! It had horns, tentacles and a monstrous index, I tell you! Imagine the Necronomicon from Army of Darkness: Painful to open, terrible to behold, but definitely a force to be reckoned with. But as a first product, and a solo writer/developer, it was a massive learning curve and a great experience.
I keep it in a locked trunk so it will never see the light of day, but without making any of those mistakes, today's game would never have been possible at all.

Now, the second iteration of the pen & paper rules was much smoother, but still had plenty of what I call "indie quirks". When you have to do it all yourself, there comes the tendency to want to re-invent the wheel, and this was certainly no exception. A lot of stuff that sounds great on paper bogs gameplay down like you wouldn't believe.

Nonetheless, the level of interest that was generated by the setting alone attracted a lot of unexpected support. I must have received something along the lines of a hundred emails giving suggestions, ideas, pleading me to make system conversions for their favorite games, etc. This gave us enough confidence to pursue the setting in a genre with wider appeal --computer games.

City of Steam is the third and most streamlined exploration of the setting. A very supportive wife, a handful of cash and two keen devs joined me at this stage to form our humble studio of three. At that time, we lived week to week on about $230 US each. It wasn't until we attracted a real dev budget that we could pull in talent from around the world. Now we have whole departments dedicated to stuff that we could never finish on our own -we're consistently surprised by the creativity and initiative of our coders, artists, designers, and marketeers (yes, we love them too)!

Being a browser-based game brings both opportunities and challenges. The potential audience is massive, but with so many fine competitors, we are really trying to distinguish ourselves from the pack.

Q: That makes a lot of sense. So tell us about the setting of City of Steam.

A: In City of Steam, the setting drives the gameplay, not the other way around. From the smallest insect to the world itself, the setting is dense and rich with a sort of romantic industrial flavor. 

This is an era where anything is possible, and being a part of that is what the game is all about -exploration, political intrigue, outright war, and personal advancement. Players in City of Steam will help to direct the course of history, perhaps even dictate the state of the world in the next iteration of the setting (yes, we plan to do moar!!!).

City of Steam is based on massively multiplayer social hubs, which are what passes for civilization in the fallen City State of Nexus. Here you will be able to trade, meet friends, show off your gear and see players, NPCs, and the Nexan Guard going about their daily business. 

We didn't skimp on environmental technological and social detail: There are zeppelins and airships, looming structures, shadows, terrain systems, positional audio, loudspeaker annoucements, signposted streets and even four different and fully readable newspapers. It's not sensory overload, but there is a lot of detail if you care to look.

Okay, I'm going to say it... please look! :-)

Two guillotines. When you've got a lot of heads to chop off and a packed schedule

Exploratory environments are zones of instanced levels, playable by teams or solo. We tried to give our "dungeons" the interactivity of a single player experience, but with the social features of an MMO. There are smashable barrels and objects, lootable tables and chests, unlockable doors and gates, and a variety of hidden passages and secret loots for players to discover. 

Each zone is a network of smaller pieces, with exits and entrances allowing clever players to take shortcuts across town or allowing completionists to explore every last darkened corner of the world. You wont get lost unless you really want to. You can play for ten minutes, or ten hours -we're accommodating that way.

Q: Interesting. Following up on this, what would you say makes the City of Steam setting really stand apart from the traditional fantasy RPG settings like the Dungeons & Dragons universe?

A: Wow, where to start? Races, classes, abilities... all are fundamentally suffused with the industrial themes of the world. This is not a cosmetic reskin or a generic fantasy world.

Case & Point: Dwarves. They're a hybrid race of metal and flesh. They aren't born... they are forged in underground factories, from organic and mechanical components. Dwarven lineage is tracked by the components and designs of their mechanical pieces. 

Some of these components date back thousands of years. They eat coal, drink oil, and alcohol actually cleanses their mechanisms. Dwarves, like every race in City of Steam has been affected by the industrial history of the world.

Thirdly, there is no divine pantheon and the ambition of the individual is much more important. Magic is not magical, rather, it is based on technological principles, focused by technique. Wands and staves can be bought off the shelves by anyone, but it takes an artist to use those tools to their full potential -like, for example, photography or a musical instrument. 

Our channeler class uses the principles of resonance and dissonance to evoke the underlying rhythms and properties of the World Machine.

The world itself is a giant machine, and is, in fact flat. The elemental planes aren't found by mystical methods -you can literally walk across the teeth of the world to reach them. The sun and stars are actually tethered to the world, orbiting as gyroscopic pieces of the superstructure of existence. 

The four elemental gears (rust, coal, oil and steam), each of which corresponds to a player statistic, drag the seasons along with them, in their circular path around the Major Plate (the largest terrestrial gear). And on the flipside of the world... well... no spoilers!

Better start gearing up. Get your butt into gear. And so on and so forth.

Q: City of Steam is going to be a free to play game. Can you talk a bit about what kind of things that people will be able to buy with real money?

A: Microtransactions will typically provide only convenience features (larger stash, reduced travel time, early access to certain items, etc). We will never put character races or classes behind a pay wall. We are currently debating whether or not bosses and quests can offer our premium currency, Electrum, to be spent in-game.

Because paid features will be released in Beta, not Alpha, we have a lot of implementation left to do there, and are very open to suggestions. Electrum has some very cool fiction behind it in the game world, so it isn't just some arbitrary "other" money what happens to co-exist alongside shillings. We want it to be something people can talk about in-character.

Q: I'm sure that a lot of players will appreciate being able to play all races and classes without having to spend any money.

How will character progression work in City of Steam? Will players have talent trees, attribute points and so on?

A: Yes we have attribute points, called vitals, and each character class has a repertoire of 30 unique abilities to choose from. While the abilities themselves are more or less established, the arrangement thereof is still up in the air (prerequisites, trees, chains and synergy). 

We can guarantee that each class will have 3 disciplines of power to draw from, and a host of exciting and varied skills within each discipline. We hope to allow players to tailor their character build to suit their play-style much in the same way that we offer an impressive range of cosmetic options.

Pillars of ice in a city of steam? This can only end in tears

Weapons can be wielded, but they can also just be worn. A fully decked out character has up to 10 mount points on their avatar, just for weapons alone, and each one can be drawn at the touch of a button, and combined in whatever configuration you want. two handed swords, dual wielding wands, pistol and shield, you name it -you'll see combinations that you haven't seen before. Armor, clothing and accessories will be distinct and visible on characters.

As players advance, they become more aware of the powers that be, the five major factions and their plans for Nexus and the world. You'll find yourself growing into a faction organically, rather than being pigeonholed into one or being assigned one from the get-go. You won't be offered membership until you can make an informed decision, and from there you can train in special faction-only skills

City of Steam is a platform with room to grow. While there are plenty of customization options available right now, there will be future expansion content possible so that each profession can diverge and become even more distinct in time (probably ties into factions here, but we'll see). A lot of what we develop for future release will be decided by player feedback and the needs of the community.

There'll be plenty of opportunity to customize your character in City of Steam

Q: Sounds cool! Besides the unique setting and your character development, what other features do you think that is going to excite people that play City of Steam?

A: First of all, it runs in a browser and is very lightweight. It's shaping up to be a lean client in terms of bandwidth and size, so your internet connection shouldn't hamstring your experience. 

Just look at the central hub, now imagine the entire scene comes down in less than 2 megabytes. 

We do this with archiving, local storage, intelligent asset control, seamless/invisible patching and by making all structures from a variety of architectural elements, dynamically assembling them into new and interesting forms at run-time. 

In fact, some zones of 20 or more levels will be constructed from a level package that is less than 1 megabyte in size. Furthermore, detail scales to your hardware, so that real-time shadows and expensive video cards won't be a barrier to entry -effects can be turned off piecemeal to achieve your desired framerate.

There'll be a graphics setting to suit even the lesser technologically endowed players in City of Steam

The world itself as it stands is very immersive, but will only become moreso with player involvement. The newspaper content we mentioned will be developed both in-house, and by players. Creative players will have a path to earn premium currency through their contributions to the game world.

Another thing we are very excited about is the quest system -in particular, emerging plot-lines and featured characters. We aim to release and expand upon the most exciting stories weekly (or biweekly at worst), as determined by player response. 

A single quest may grow into a year-long narrative. Our quest system is versatile enough to allow players to take multiple paths through quests, and to eventually affect the world itself. But nothing is set it stone unless you want it to be -if a quest turns out a way you didn't want, you can clean the slate and try again. Our narrative ambitions are supported by the server engine itself. Again, the gameplay is there in service of narrative.

As we mentioned previously, avatar customization is a big priority -the people of Nexus are very fashion conscious. Also, the interactivity of exploratory environments is important, too. We want to have more than just a combat experience. Some quests will be social and economic in nature, while others will be completely exploration and discovery.

Q: Finally, do you have a release date planned yet for City of Steam?

A: City of Steam will initially be released with the core functions and classes of the game, early next year. Currently we are looking at February, and are fairly happy with the way the game plays so far. The only thing that will really impact on this deadline is the amount of content, testing and tweaking required to get the game ready.

All other planned but not-yet-implemented features and resources will be freely viewable on our website: New weapons and armor, continuation of quests, scene concepts, monster concepts, character classes in development and even music. We have a lot to show and a lot to be proud of, and will put our development team at the player's disposal to finish additional content according to community demand.

After the initial release of City of Steam, Mechanist Games will be beavering away on delivering further game content

Q: Sounds great. So not too long a wait, then. Any closing remarks, guys?

A: We'll also be available to accept suggestions and field questions about the game, directly from our website. Our new site will be live soon enough and developers (myself and Ian included) will be keen to get in touch with players and find out what really excites them.

Excellent, thanks a lot for your time to both of you!

For more info on City of Steam, including some short videos of the game in action, check out the official City of Steam website.



 Subscribe in a reader