I love steampunk. It’s a small and weird genre that just has not been explored enough in popular fiction. Sure, there are some notable exceptions, such as The engine of difference By William Gibson and Bruce Sterling (Two of my favorite cyberpunk friends), but for the most part, steampunk is occasionally pushed into the art theme of the game or the theme of a comic book party. It has a subculture, but it’s small and weird and we just miss things like that. It is also a pity that the idea of ​​the technological revolution taking place in the Victorian era allows for the creation of a rich package of conceptual fiction that we simply do not accept.
Into this wilderness of steampunk enters to Steam Highwayman: Smog and ambush M Cubos Games For iOS and Android, based on the book by Martin is desperate. The Steam Highwayman is originally a game book created by Nouch and funded by Kickstarter in 2017. If you are not familiar with game books, think of your own pick-adventure but with dice stats and dice, more like a combination of CYOA books and dungeons and dragons. The genre was huge in the pre-tech 80s with a wide variety of fantasy and science fiction books available. Now, the genre is actually dead, but The Steam Highwayman completely captures the vibe of these old game books.
The mobile game is very similar to a book in terms of design. You pick up your initial background story and immediately engage in a Victorian steampunk epic, exploding across the countryside in your velosteam (steam-powered motorcycle) to correct injustices, escape persecution, or simply succeed. There are no shortage of options in Steam Highwayman. Good, bad, everyone just different options and everyone has their pros and cons. However there is abundance in this choice. The game is built just like a traditional game book, giving you a written dialogue, a selection of options at the end of each section, and occasionally testing skills or throwing combat cubes. As you make your choices, the game increasingly branches out into a complex network of options, depending on where you go. The map is surprising in size and the options seem scary at first, especially without real directions. You’re never forced to go a certain way on Steam Highwayman and that can lead to a random wander or a significant confrontation.
Each story will be different so it is impossible to give a summary of the plot on Steam Highwayman. Eventually, you will be able to come to some conclusion or, well, die. This is where things get complicated. If you’re looking forward to a casual phone game here, you may want to keep going. Steam Highwayman is everything but a casual game, which is a little weird for a phone game. You must read and pay attention to the salient details in the dialogue, extract the key information, and then take advantage of what you have learned to navigate the map and find your way to the next adventure in the game. If this sounds difficult, it’s because it’s definitely yes. This is not a game that holds your hand in any way. The game map is huge and the roads are not straight or carefully marked on the map, and even just finding the way to a given town can take time and plenty of wrong choices. It’s really frustrating when you’re told to go visit an old woman in three cities, and you can not just choose the ways to get to the city. It’s even worse when you get there and you have no food for it so you end up doing nothing of importing and then walk away, failing to advance the plot or improve your character.
The details on Steam Highwayman are what sabotage the game. Navigating the map is really challenging, as it is not possible to select areas and travel quickly, and not all roads are marked. Once you realize you can not make choices just like that, you will end up constantly checking the map to see if you are going the right way, a distracting procedure. Once you get there, the game presents all the options you were unable to activate, and teases you with a game depth that you are unable to experience without considerable effort. While all the options are presented, they just do not always work. If you are told about a mechanic who needs a job, you can not just go see him (normal game logic). Instead, you must first find the job for him or the contact options are gray. Where is this work? Let me know when you find it, I’m still looking.
In addition to the innate complexity of Steam Highwayman in terms of structure and use of the map, there is also a combat dimension to the game. As you steam through the village, you will have skill tests and random encounters, each of which requires a dice roll. You will succeed in rolling the dice, and if anything, nothing will happen. This is a big failure in the game because random events can certainly advance the plot if a player has trouble finding money, getting keywords or opening quests, but here they do not serve any important purpose most of the time. Fails and there are usually penalties, and throwing digital dice feels a little unfair. This problem expands with battle, where you have to roll over a certain number to be successful and the game feels almost fake with how difficult it is to perform combat incarnations. Regardless of your incarnations, enemies tend to hit harder and roll higher than you and the balance just feels off. There is a good chance you will die if you fight even the weakest opponents.
It is important to note here that this is a game designed for you to gradually build the skills and inventory of your character and improve his reputation little by little. The Steam Highwayman is very reminiscent of the old Car War Game Books From the Steve Jackson games, in that it’s a fantastic concept with a cruel difficulty curve that leaves players feeling like they can not succeed or that they have to cheat to do so. Unlike Car Wars, however, you can not cheat on Steam Highwayman, which forces you to start over and hope that you can remember all the industries you have chosen if the fighting is going badly (it will work). However, if you are incredibly patient and stubborn and you want to slowly learn the map and routes around Marlowe and the surrounding towns and villages, you can slowly progress to a legend in the countryside, a hero for the masses, and a villain to the true Robin Hood style rich. Or just beat up some guys and steal their money. But either way, it will take a lot of patience, items and luck to read your way through the crowded text of Steam Highwayman.
As mentioned, the map is exceptional, looks like a traditional vintage map and the whole game maintains the same excellent graphic design. Easy-to-read fonts, slick and responsive user interface, and occasionally attached images are well-drawn and interesting. It really is an amazing game and the user interface is just fantastic. The music that accompanies the game is also well made and the whole experience from the point of view of a game is one of excellent polishing, precision and design choices.
This is not to say that the writing is bad either. It really is not. This is a well written and interesting script and cool. The map is spectacular. The overall concept is excellent. But the difficulty curve is unforgivable and will likely condition all players, except the most dedicated players, from pursuing the true depth available on Steam Highwayman. For $ 4, you get a lot of play here, but the game expects as much from you as possible. It’s hard not to like Steam Highwayman: Smog and Ambuscade, but it’s also hard to unequivocally recommend it. It’s guaranteed to be a love-or-hate title, similar to the 80s playbooks. If you love reading, love the idea of ​​steampunk, or a steampunk fan however, Steam Highwayman is a particularly unique experience that is worth your time to check out. Just make sure you are the patient type!
This review was based on a digital copy of Steam Highwayman: Smog and Ambuscade provided by the publisher. It was played on the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus and worked perfectly without any issues or crashes. Steam Highwayman: Smog and Ambuscade is also available for Apple phones on iOS. All pictures are of a real game.