While we wait for the Beta to be ready (announcement on this to come soon!), here’s a bit of a development update on City of Steam.

A lot of new things coming up for the Beta… a lot. One of the big ones? Why, a little thing we’ve been mulling over for a while now: Wilderness instances.

“But Mechanist,” we hear you say. “Don’t we already have ‘wilderness’ instances in places like the Dustyard and Scraphills?”

To which we chuckle condescendingly, replying: “Oh, no no no. Those are just aboveground dungeons, which just have a ‘wilderness’ aesthetic to them. The Wilderness is a public combat level, an open instance where monsters respawn.”

Yes. Public instances. A place, with mobs, that won’t just be yourself or up to 5 players in a group. Everyone can jump into the fray.

If you’ve been following City of Steam up to now, you probably know how big this is. So far, we only had single player or group instances, making the game more of a dungeon crawler MMO. We had been toying with the idea of an open, public instance, for a while now. We wanted it, players wanted it, but it was a matter of making it work within the game’s limitations. Well, after months of trial and error, we found a way, and now City of Steam is starting to look like an actual MMORPG!

Now, if you’re only finding out about City of Steam now, this feature is probably not as exciting to hear about… so um… How about this? We also have jetpacks!

They (both Wilderness instances and jetpacks of course) will be awesome. That is all…(for now)

Horrid, aren’t they? Checkered capes, huge paudrons… Sure, those might fit in some other MMO setting, but in ours, being more industrial/steampunk, the style just stuck out like a sore thumb.

The right-most guard, Captain Twyne, is a unique NPC with his own part to the game’s story. He was actually the winner of “the most popular NPC” contest from our Alpha events (yes, we don’t discriminate against NPCs, they can win too!), thus got himself a makeover; and boy did he get one. We made his armor more snug, detailed and even gave him some facial hair; even now he’s still the only unique guard using this NPC model.

The other NPC guards got a similar wardrobe overhaul, and look much more respectable now; their uniforms have a more Victorian air to them that fits the setting much better.

If you’ve played the game you’ve probably already seen them but there they are, much more respectable and far less gaudy. The colors, red, white and black, are symbolic of their home nation (The Heartlands), as per their flag shown below.

Some of the other NPCs have undergone similar changed, but much more minor. The Guard Toilers, for instance, used to be mainly blue, but are now red (same national reasons as the guards).

(And no, the red wasn’t just for the holidays….. ignore the hat. I said…! Ah, never mind…)

So there you have it, the new designs! We’re very happy with the changes; we hope you are as well. Keep an eye on our site for further updates leading up to Beta further this year!

So now the last question remains, “Who the torque are you?”

City of Steam dev team

Oh, and please vote for us on Greenlight!

This comes after the success of an Alpha and two Beta tests, not to mention the requests of fans to get the game on Steam after the start of the closed beta. To its credit, Mechanist Games is promising a ton of extras for the game if the campaign is successful.

Some of these extras include 7 extra pets (2 inspired by Valve – maybe Half Life 2’s DOG?), 3 new Steambites (with 1 Valve tribute model), 8 new dungeon types, Steam Achievements, extra hardcore dungeon challenges, jetpacks (!), added character customization options and more hats. Because everyone loves more hats, apparently. This stacks on top of 10 humongous hubs, oodles of equipment and 11 playable classes.

Check out the beta teaser trailer below or click here for more information on City of Steam.

When amazing people who want to play the game give us their hard-earned money, we like to reward them. When our early supporters gave us enough for the Paragon tier, we wanted to show our appreciation by inviting them to join in on the creative process. Going from an idea or sketch to an actual in-game item with animations and everything is actually a pretty long and involved process, so we had to phase it out as we move forward into further Beta stages in order to focus on our own content. Still, many great ideas and additions came from it, and we’re proud to share it.

And now, on with the designs! This time we’ve got four of them for you, from a 2-handed engine sword to a Steampunk ‘Vader’ mask, we’ve got it all. Let’s go through the four latest designs and show you some of the back and forth between our wonderful Paragons and ourselves.

Uvhash:

“One Steampunk, red haired, goggle wearing Vader coming up!”

We sort of mistook this for a codpiece at first…

Uvhash wanted a rather imposing mask, after taking in his designer notes and the pictures he sent in we were sure we could make something fantastic. Fusing the goggles and facemask together with vials of liquid on the side, it makes for a pretty intimidating sight.

You can see how the concept turned out, which he asked us to include on his customized Avatar(it was a 2-in-1 concept drawing job!).

Ryuusei Cartwright:
“Calling it the Swiss Army Knife of weapons wouldn’t even do it justice.”

 After a lot of back and forth with Ryuusei, in the end this idea came out as one  pretty awesome design we might not have considered before, the Universal Hand:

“This 1H weapon contains all the componentry required to make it usable by any profession. It can produce magic, cut flesh, and fire projectiles, making it an amazing weapon with great variety of tactical uses. Unfortunately, these advantages come at a price of efficacy –it does less damage than other weapons.”

So what was Ryuusei’s response?
“Looks great! I like it, no complaints.”

All in a day’s work.

Vinal:

“When technology and the dead co-exist, only then can the wielder harness its strength”

While Ryuusei designed a very multifunctional weapon, Vinal had a very specific weapon in mind, from his drawings and the correspondence we had with him we could clearly see what he was going for.

With this very clear outline of what he wanted, we went to work; this was the result after our masterful concept artist was done!

A few things about this 2-handed behemoth we’re going to let you find out yourself once it’s in the game, but here’s the description for the weapon.

“A family treasure of Albun. Both a greaser and an engineer. He had an idea of making a weapon which fuses the power of rock and energy itself. The trend caught on.” 

Basically, when wielding this sword you’re wielding a small engine, for that bit of extra POWERRR on your hacks ‘n slashes of course.  Now you can really hit like a truck!

Winterschill:

“Power and elegance, forged into one design to create the perfect killing machine.”

Winterschill didn’t waste any time in sending us his ideas, and soon we agreed on these two sketches of a rifle, one for the weapon itself, and one for the color placement. He also gave us a very specific description and provided just about every detail on it.

So we went to work to make a rifle and a companion sidearm for short range. And this is how the Rin Insomnia Rifle, a high powered, long range weapon of pinpoint destruction, and the Rin MarkVIII Sidearm, a more compact version for close quarters combat, were born. Sleek, semi-automatic killing machines.

And that’s it for this week and another four of our Paragon supporters! And there are more on the way as we move forward. We’ve seen some of the final weapon models in-game already and they look fan-tas-tic, all of them are available everyone by completing a collection of their pieces (essentially “crafting” them for yourself)

We’ve received a lot of positive feedback on these weapon designs, a real shame we have to phase out getting this extra from our top supporter packs… Not a decision we made lightly, but it was necessary to focus on our way ahead. We’ve learned a lot from our Closed Beta process; not just from talking to our player community about their game experience and expectations, fixing bugs or rebalancing gameplay, but from things like the custom item design, we’ve found that to really make this game into what we envision, sometimes we sometimes have to stop taking on so much and concentrate on the bigger picture.

The same goes for our own team; we’ve had to re-think our approach to making City of Steam so that we wouldn’t be in a constant, unending rush to finish everything. Now, we’re looking to have a better balance of delivering a good game without killing ourselves for it (we want to keep making other games, after all!). A chance to step back, breathe, and reflect has given us new perspective and renewed enthusiasm to get City of Steam out there for players to do what they do best: enjoy a good game.

-City of Steam Dev Team

City of Steam is awesome, and now we have 30 beta codes we have to give a way for our readers. Our exclusive developer journal here will tell u all that you need to know about the game and more. To win, all you need to do is comment below with your email address in this format: abc (at) abc (dot) com.

City of Steam is 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.

It contains great character and weapon customization, branching storylines, beautiful graphics and scenery, and content for casual and hardcore gamers alike. Here’s the timing of the beta, it runs from November 16th to December 28th, and is divided into 4 seasons:

• Springtide (Nov. 16th to 20th)
• Summercrest (Nov. 30th to Dec. 4th)
• Autumnwane (Dec. 14th to 18th)
• Winter Festival (Dec. 23 to 28th)

So what are you waiting for? Fire away in the comments section below and get in the City of Steam beta.

As of now, the beta is closed and will consist of a few 5-day test phases commencing on November 16th, 2012. The schedule is as follows:

Springtide: Nov. 16 – 20
Summercrest: Nov. 30 – Dec. 4
Autumnwane: Dec. 14 – 18
Winter Festival: Dec. 23 – 28

For those taking part in the beta, there are Collaborator Packs which you can pick up for in-game extras like character name reservation, guaranteed beta access, social currency, and more, including higher level packs which let you personally design items and named as a city founder in-game.

To keep an eye out for updates regarding development, including chances of receiving a free beta key, subscribe to Mechanist’s newsletter today.

Hi everyone at GamingBolt, I’m Andrew Woodruff, one of the developers of City of Steam at Mechanist Games. Heard of us? Great! … Haven’t? Well, we’re still small, so I can’t say I blame you, but we’re growing. In the near future, with a bit of luck, you’ll be wondering how come you haven’t heard of us yet (or so we hope, anyway… we can dream too, can’t we?).

Back in August we wrapped up our Alpha test, and now we’re inching closer to the closed Beta release. But getting this far has been a very long journey.

We started off with just 4 guys. We had this idea, and the drive to make it happen. The evolving nature of the whole process was enlightening. You don’t just get a huge group of developers together and suddenly coordinate it all into making a game. You start small, piece by piece. The few of us took on a lot of roles as the game grew, as we had to learn new skills every step of the way to make it happen. And we were set up in this really crappy little apartment-office room…

Just… awful…

But we had something. Our tech demo we presented attracted a lot of new talent we desperately needed to really make the game we envisioned. The setting was refreshing; a blend we ended up calling “industrial age fantasy”, where the entire world is rooted in technology (even the planet itself), with steamworks and clockworks, belching furnaces and airships. None of that overused high fantasy rubbish with elves living in trees or dragons flying around for no other reason than “it’s magic!”

But that was years ago. We’ve since grown to a team of just over 30 developers from around the world. Now here we are, on the brink of releasing Beta, and just short of squeeing like schoolgirls in anticipation. And did I mention it’s a browser game? It’s a browser game. With Unity3D and plenty of our own in-house tools, we’ve optimized City of Steam to keep it light, fast, very accessible, and still look, play and feel like a first-class MMO.

It’s one of our goals, really. To break the stigma that browser-based games have to be sub-par (we hear “Browser game? Pass…” a lot). Or that you have to still download gigs of data to play a decent one, kind of defeating the purpose of it being browser-based in the first place. We want to make a free-to-play, content-rich, highly accessible, and above all, fun game that we ourselves enjoy playing as much as our fans.

So with Closed Beta approaching, we invite readers to head on over to our site and sign up to our newsletter for a chance to receive a Beta key, check out our content-packed site and hit up our forum to interact with our already amazing interactive growing community. We value your feedback and routinely poll players for that extra polishing touch of community-driven development (yes, we do in fact listen!). So come check us out, see how we’ll change the face of browser gaming, and share your thoughts!

Before I sign off, I want to share a silly little video we made in the middle of our rush to get the game ready for Beta. The weirdest things come out of our writers’ minds when they are overworked… Power Steam Video:

After what developers Mechanist Games are calling a successful alpha testing, they’ve announced a closed beta test for their upcoming game, City of Steam.

The alpha test ran over four weekends, finishing on August 20th, and 17,500 keys were activated. Four classes and 9 character options were provided with the game.

The devs have reportedly squashed out several bugs that were reported during the alpha test, including the movements and animations for characters being smoothed out. They’ve also taken several suggestions by the players into consideration and implemented some of them into the game.

The beta test will launch in November. It will have a higher level cap, more characters, more quests, and more races and classes. Further details will be announced soon.

This unique MMORPG browser-based game shows impressive graphics detailing an industrial age fantasy genre. The complex storyline is based on the table-top book series, The New Epoch, by David Lindsay.  Players take on the role of refugees fleeing their troubled homelands to the once powerful, now declining metropolis of Nexus. Mechanical steam-work blurs with magic as players explore the rich world of a once great civilization. Hundreds of quests lead players through ancient ruins, searching for archaic spoils while trying to find a place, for themselves and their family, in their new home.

THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED

Just comment below and we’ll hand them out first-come, first-served. Simple, eh?

City of Steam, a full-featured, browser-based 3D MMORPG, transports players to an industrial metropolis that has fallen from grace. Emerging from the ashes of ages past, heroes versed in swordplay, divine harmonies, and the arcane arts seek their fortune in a world beset by countless foes, from dangerous factions to mechanical horrors.