City of Steam

[Talolan]

Link: http://www.mmorpg.com/giveaways.cfm/off ... eaway.html

So what is City of Steam? It’s a 3D industrial age fantasy MMORPG. The debut Unity3D-based MMO from Mechanist Games, it transports players to a world where clockworks, steam power, and arcane technologies suffuse every aspect of existence, from the half-organic, half-mechanical dwarves to the giant gears of the World Machine itself.

MMORPG is giving away keys to the City of Steam closed beta to anybody with an MMORPG account. As I post this there are about 4,300 keys left to give away.

[Lasarian]

So do we just need to create an MMORPG account to get the key or is there an additional step? I've looked, but I can't seem to find any further info.

[Talolan]

So do we just need to create an MMORPG account to get the key or is there an additional step? I've looked, but I can't seem to find any further info.

Just create an MMORPG account, then on the link provided click the "get your key" near the bottom of the page. I'm guessing on the language, since I can't see the link anymore since I already got my code.

[Lasarian]

Yeah, that link wasn't appearing ... got it now. Thanks.

[Talolan]

I didn't really know much about this game, but hey... free beta code. So I went digging to see what I could find. The developer, Mechanist Games, has a series of Dev Journals available.

Some content from other sites:
Massively: Massively Exclusive: Gauging the pressure on the City of Steam alpha
Massively: Massively Exclusive: Seeing the sights in City of Steam

I can't recall the last indie MMO that was making any waves while still being in the pre-alpha stage, but that's the strange power that Mechanist Games' City of Steam has. Word-of-mouth and a clever setting have made this a must-see title, and we were pleased to join Editor Gabriel Laforge for a developer tour of the game in its current state.

City of Steam is an indie MMO, but don't let that put you off; the team is substantially larger than you'd expect and brimming with talent. The steampunk title loads extremely quickly in your browser, thanks to the Unity web player and a ridiculously small client size.

MMORPG: City of Steam Previews: Exclusive First Preview

There was a time when the words “browser-based MMO” would make me cringe. However, with the creation and evolution of the Unity Engine, that old stigma no longer exists. And games like City of Steam, from Mechanist Games is an ambitious dungeon-crawling Action-MMORPG set in a massive steampunk-themed city with dungeons to run around every turn. Every feature you’ve come to know and love in traditional MMOs is there, and it’ll all be F2P. Sure, maybe it won’t compete with the likes of GW2 or TSW, but considering its accessibility and business model, it doesn’t need to. It just needs to be fun enough to make players want to spend a little money.

ZAM: City of Steam Alpha Review

[Talolan]

MMORPG has another look at the City of Steam beta.
Link: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game ... tml/page/1

Whenever I hear the phrase “web based MMO” I instantly think of either MMOs for kids such as Marvel’s Super Hero Squad Online and Wizard 101 or turn based “social games” which require you to save up turns or energy while offline so you can play in tiny chunks of time. Don’t get me wrong, my kids and I are big fans of MSHSO and the 101 games, but the phrase never makes me think of a “full-fledged” MMO experience. So naturally, when I got an invite to take a tour of City of Steam’s upcoming beta build, I wasn’t expecting much. But I was intrigued based primarily on the setting and the idea that there could be a solid MMO experience in a browser. It has been one of the promises of the Unity Engine for a while now; someone has to eventually knock one out of the park right?

The first thing that really stood out and impressed me was how quickly everything loaded. In speaking with Andrew on the subject I learned that City of Steam manages to have an incredibly small file size. While most browser based games who claim “almost nothing to download, just play instantly” actually download around a gig worth of files to your temp cache, City of Steam comes in at a whopping 15MB. Most of the zones you visit run about 1MB in size or less and load almost instantly. This is made even more amazing by how detailed and nice everything looks. They definitely don’t sacrifice graphics to reach these download amounts and loading speeds. And you also don’t need a beast of a gaming machine to run the game. I just have a mid-range system and was able to jack all the settings all the way up and turn on all of the bells and whistles like hard shadows and full water effects without affecting my frame rate at all.

Massively also took a look at the City of Steam beta again.
Link: http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/11/16 ... -of-steam/

Browser games aren't supposed to be like this. Browser games are supposed to be Flash-based trifles and social "gaming" money printers. They're supposed to have simple graphics, shallow gameplay and zero narrative. Put simply, browser-based games are supposed to be bad.

City of Steam, a free-to-play, browser-based MMO developed by Mechanist Games, isn't content to live in this world of assumed browser-based inferiority. In fact, the game almost feels like a challenge to the industry: If this is what browsers can do, why isn't everyone doing it? City of Steam has the potential to shake the foundation of the MMO world by proving that full, engaging game experiences can be delivered instantly and on-demand, as long as its final execution lives up to its current promise.

[Talolan]

City of Steam has been in open beta for a few days now. I took a couple videos of the browser-based MMO-Action RPG and will post them soon.

[Talolan]

Now remember, this game was made in the Unity engine, and is playable through your browser with the Unity Web Player plugin. I was up and running and playing this game in 30 seconds, and I didn't have to download anything.

Intro Movie:


Character Creation:


Prologue Cut Scene:


I had a gameplay movie as well, but for whatever reason my recorder didn't like it, so it had all kinds of goofy issues. The game played exactly like you'd expect for an ARPG (ie: Diablo, Dungeon Siege, etc), it was just my video recorder that didn't want to work.