Steampunk / Video Games

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• 80 Days is a unique take on Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days. Except the events of the game (built like an interactive novel) take place in a Steam Punkish Alternate History that also crosses into Clock Punk territory. Right off the bat, you (Passepartout) and your master, Phileas Fogg, take a mechanical carriage (i.e. a carriage pulled by a mechanical horse) to the train station. The train turns out to be able to cross the English Channel by turning into a submarine. After you get to Paris (which is actually occupied by Prussians), you can get a few options as far as your next route (for some reason, Fogg always lets his manservant pick the next leg). On your journey, you find out about the Artificer Guild, who are responsible for all the Steam/Clock Punking that is going on. Your modes of transportation range from mechanical carriages and Cool Trains (one is actually shaped like an iron horse) to Zeppelins from Another World and steamships that can submerge (thereby traveling faster). The largest transportation mode in this world is the entire city of Agra, which is a walking city built by Emperor Shah Jahan to honor his third wife Mumtaz (basically, imagine the Taj Mahal on huge mechanical legs).
• Robo Aleste is set in an Alternate History Sengoku period Japan that suddenly underwent a technological leap to around 1900 and started making Humongous Mecha.
• American McGee's Alice has some steampunk/clockpunk influences, especially when you're in the Mad Hatter's realms. Two levels of the maze portion of the game involve making your way through a giant steam-powered machine.
• Most of the heavy machinery in Amnesia: The Dark Descent is steam or water driven, though this is accurate to the time period (1839). One note can be found by the Baron lamenting the necessity of steam tech; it may work, but it's large, noisy, and crude.
  Baron: Where the inventor of this device would require a magnifying glass to make his minute adjustments, I must push five men to erect a tower of iron, in the hopes of harnessing even one hundredth of the same energy!
  • Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs also uses this, being set on the night of Dec 31 1899, and Magnus created a massive machine below a meat processing factory, which converts people into Man-Pigs. The machine has a long network of pipes to power itself with steam, and later human blood.
• The Angband variant Steamband is a Roguelike with a steampunk theme (One of the races is a steam mecha, for example.), in which the goal is to get out of the earth's core to the surface.
• Another Sight has a steampunk aesthetic. This is justified, since the game is set in 1899, and most of the stranger machines are designed by Nikola Tesla himself. There's also some influence from the Node that makes the impossible easier to bring into reality, though this is implied to not necessarily be a good thing.
• Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura features an unusual take on the concept. It is set in a stereotypical High Fantasy world featuring humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, ogres, orcs, various crossbreeds between them and other such trappings of Tolkien-esque fantasy. The twist is that an industrial revolution began in this world called Arcanum circa 60 years earlier, with the result being that most of the main cities of the world are at at steampunkish version of late 19th century industrialised societies level of technology. This means that railroads, pneumatic tube subways, telegraphs, gnomish capitalists, orcs as mistreated factory workers and other fantasy-ish twists on concepts taken from steampunk or history are present. A prominent theme is the conflict between Magic and Technology, where Magic is based on the caster affecting usual laws of physics through willpower and the new-fangled Technology is based around exploiting the laws of physics to achieve a desired result, thus actually strengthening the laws of physics around machinery. The net result is that having a magic user present can cause a machine to malfunction, and a complex machine can in turn cause magic to fail in a certain radius around it.
  • The game also acts as a Deconstruction for steam punk settings by showing off the less glamorous aspects of the Victorian age. Factories are hideously unsafe to work in, and striking workers often get shot in the street by capitalist thugs. Classism and racism are everywhere, and a scary amount of people agree with eugenics — there's even a very uncomfortable book that talks about solving "the Orcish Question" by use of a breeding program and removal of a "malignant gland". If you play as a half-orc then most people will at best be grudgingly civil, and at worst will be vocally disgusted by your presence.
• Aztec Wars has alement of steampunk in its Alternate History. The Russians, the Chinese and to some extent, the Aztecs use steam-powered tanks and turrets that have cannons mounted on them, shoot huge arrows... or... toss giant axes?!
• Batman: Arkham City had a deserted section of the undercity called "Wonder City", a steampunk utopia from the 1800's that ran on Lazarus Pit chemicals and had robotic "mechanical guardians".
• BioShock Infinite serves partially as a Genre Deconstruction. It's set in the floating city of Columbia, which was made as flying monument of American Exceptionalism, and a secret superweapon. The inhabitants live in a Edwardian Era steam punk society, mixed with some bits from the modern era, which are taken from tears that lead to alternate worlds. But whereas other works are content to focus on The Theme Park Version of Steampunk, what with the cool-looking technology and 19th-century fashion sensibilities, BioShock Infinite clearly presents Columbia as a Crapsaccharine World run by casual racists.
• The Chaos Engine takes place in victorian England, following the reverse-engineering of future technology by a mad scientist who captured a time traveler. The eponymous engine has already turned England into a Crapsack World by the time the game starts.
• In City of Heroes, one of the most dangerous and tricky archvillains around is "Nemesis, the Prussian Prince of Automation," sometimes referred to as the Brass Prince. He uses Steampunk technology that easily matches and surpasses most of the sleek sci-fi technology of the universe, right down to his personal, steam-powered battlesuit. Oh, and how 'bout a steam-powered cybernetic implant?
  • On the player side, there's some pretty funky steampunk costume pieces. They sadly lack boots in the set, but the Piston Boots fit very well. (no pun intended) The Going Rogue expansion included a Praetorian group of heroes in steampunk inspired garb fighting against the tyranny of Tyrant's empire. Their design highly resembles a heroic, steampunk version of the Primal Earth Freakshow villain group. They also put out a Steampunk pack on July 1st, 2011 for players.
• Even the Civilization series has dabbled in steampunk. V has the Empires of the Smoky Skies scenario, which lets players control Fantasy Counterpart Culture European nations in an alternate 19th century. The research tree is completely redesigned, starting from Steam Power and including techs such as Analog Computation, a Sky Fortress and Perpetual Motion.
• Clustertruck: The 8th world in the game is literally just called "Steampunk World".
• Code Name: S.T.E.A.M, as you might expect by the title, is all about steampunk. It features a team assembled by Abraham Lincoln who use steam-powered gear (up to and including a Humongous Mecha) to repel an alien invasion.
• Covert Front takes place in a Steam Punk Alternate History with technology including, among other things, a literal library search engine.
• Crimson Steam Pirates is a mobile game where the Golden Age of Piracy takes place during the age of steam. Naturally, this is an Alternate Universe, where the Confederacy was not re-absorbed into the Union. While most characters are fictional, there are a few Historical Domain Characters, including Mark Twain (an expert navigator) and Nikola Tesla (designer of exotic Energy Weapons). Most vehicles are steamships, but there are also steam submarines, steam zeppelins, and steam airplanes, and a few left-over sailing ships and sail/steam hybrids. Being a pirate game, boarding can also take place, but only in scripted missions. Weapons include cannons, rockets, machineguns (for airplanes), bombs (for zeppelins), torpedoes (for some ships and submarines), and Tesla's Energy Weapons.
• Almost all technology in the "present" in Dark Cloud 2 is steampunk. Even the weapons.
• The Temen-ni-gru tower in Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening has elevators and monorail trams, amongst other things, powered by clockpunk. Even complete with power shortages.
• The German RPG Die Reise ins All is strongly influenced by the works of Verne and wells and contains a lot of steampunk elements.
• Dishonored has a very Steampunk art design. Protagonist Corvo wears an elaborate mechanical mask, and carries a clockwork heart accessory. The non-player characters also wear very Victorian-style wardrobes. A spreading plague is central to the plot. However, rather than steam being the dominant power source, the game world instead runs on whale oil.
• While the overall series would be classified as cyberpunk or postcyberpunk, the .hack//G.U. games feature some steampunk technology (for example, the steam bikes). In fact you even meet at least one steampunk fanatic in the game.
  • The Steampunk elements in the series can easily be seen by looking at the city of Mac Anu. In The World R:1 it's a Canal City ala Venice. In R:2, it's still Canal City (but with a radically different layout, but the canals are rarely shown in use and steam-based Robots serve as the NPCs rather than the Humans of the previous version. Steampunk fixtures are common. In the World R:X the Steam Punk elements have been removed but the layout of the city seems to be the same as R:2.
• The technology used by the Gnomes of Popsprocket in DragonFable has a very steampunk aesthetic. They even create an army of steam-powered robots...who promptly rebel against them.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • The Dwemer, a sub-species of Naytheist elves who disappeared thousands of years before the time of the games takes place, were this. They were master enchanters in addition to their technical expertise, adding some Magitek elements to their technology. Their ruins and creations are still up and running thousands of years later due to the Dwemer having altered the "Earth Bones," essentially the laws of nature and physics, to make their creations last. It has all become Lost Technology in the ages since, with none of the other races coming anywhere close to matching the accomplishments of the Dwemer. Morrowind and Skyrim feature Dwemer ruins prominently, as those settings had the densest populations of the Dwemer before their disappearance. Many of their machines vent steam when in use and their ruins are littered with massive steam pipes, though the primary power source of their machinery actually seems to be soul gems.
  • In Morrowind's Tribunal expansion, Tribunal deity Sotha Sil's Clockwork City is this, with elements of Magitek as well. Numerous death traps fill the place, as do his semi-organic "fabricant" Mecha-Mooks.
• Early designs for Epic Mickey were heavily influenced by Steampunk. The finished product landed more in Schizo Tech, but some of the early elements are still visible, like the automaton versions of Goofy, Daisy, and Donald.
• Fable II is loaded to the brim with the Clockpunk variation, with clockwork mechanisms used to permit semiautomatic rifles, intricate automatic locks, and other such things in an otherwise very 18th century setting.
  • And then Fable III jumps into steampunk with both feet, as it occurs in an early 19th century setting. The Indistrial Knight DLC lets you dress up in a suit of extremely steampunk armor complete with gear motif and glowing goggles.
• Final Fantasy constantly cycles between this, Cyberpunk, clockpunk and every Punk in the book.
  • Final Fantasy V has the Ronka Ruins, a ruin full of Lost Technology that serves as a cross between Steampunk and the Eternal Engine, before it, there is the Steamship, which is a massive fire-powered boat created by Cid and Mid for the industrial nation of Karnak, which eventually serves as a Cool Boat for the heroes.
  • Even more so is Final Fantasy VI, set as it is in the middle of a second industrial revolution, with railroads, trains, and steamboats being common features. Narshe is loaded with coal mines, railroads, and heaters that keep the snowy streets warm, the kingdom of Figaro is centered in a submersible castle that is powered with massive steam engines, and King Figaro himself, with all manner of gadgets, up to and including an Automatic Crossbow. The Empire, on the other hand, uses the life force of enslaved Espers to power its Magitek armored walkers and Air Force, and some of the more elite soldiers are actually cyborgs, as they utilize computer programs in battle and short circuit when attacked with lightning or water.
  • In Final Fantasy IX, airships and other heavy machinery are mostly run by the Mist, a strange natural resource with magical properties that is later discovered to be derived from the souls of the dead. Halfway through the game, the heroes slay the monster who was capturing these souls and as a consequence, all long-distance travel halts due to the Mist vanishing. Thankfully, Regent Cid has been developing the steam engine- which eventually results in the creation of a steam-powered airship which the heroes can use to their advantage.
• In Gems of War, the kingdom of Adana is a steampunk-ish zone in a world which generally isn't. It's more technologically advanced than the other kingdoms, and its units are often mechanical (e.g. the Flame Cannon or the Steam Turret) and/or armed with guns (e.g. the Musketeer).
• Guns of Icarus is Steampunk-themed, with Zeppelins from Another World and lots and lots of Sky Pirates.
• Guns of Icarus Online is all about crewing airships. One of the equipment slots is even specifically for goggles!
• Haven Moon's aesthetics are heavily steampunk-inspired. The buildings and machinery resemble that of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and there is an airship you can travel in.
• The Upper City area of Hidden City is first introduced by the arrival of two strangers in an airship, and many of the locations feature steam pipes that often serve as hiding spots for objects. Technology-wise, they are in an antiquated era where candles and/or gas lamps are still used for lighting, and typewriters and fireplace bellows are still commonplace. The residents of that district also wear fashion that looks more distinctly Victorian Era-esque than the more mordern/casual outfits worn by those from the Main City—which has a more Urban Fantasy feel—and two of the prominent characters hailing from that district are lamplighters.
• Hidden Dragon: Legend contains plenty of steampunk robots serving as recurring Mecha-Mooks. In the Tang Dynasty.
• Ironcast features steampunkish tinkers in mechs battling it out as the French launch an invasion of Victorian Britain (complete with Zeppelins from Another World bombing London).
• Jade Empire has bat-winged "flyers" created by a goggle-wearing mad scientist, and an eccentric monocle-wearing British Gentleman Adventurer named "Sir Roderick Ponce Von Fontlebottom, the Magnificent Bastard" (voiced by John Cleese) in the Imperial City.
• Precursor technology in Jak and Daxter looks very Steampunk-inspired. Even in the technologically advanced Bad Future, whatever Precursor artifacts and robots remain appear to be steam-powered.
• Kaptain Brawe A Brawe New World has steam-powered wooden spaceships mixed with Raygun Gothic.
• In Kingdom Hearts, Hollow Bastion could be considered steam punk, or at least Clock Punk.
• Lamplight City takes place in a universe where the Industrial Revolution happened earlier and turned out more advanced, which resulted in the development of "steam-tech" that included automated machines, such as primitive automobiles, and airships. It also stands out as a somewhat downplayed example, as "steam-tech" is still a relatively new invention, and is met with some degree of consumer skepticism, especially from older people, so the more advanced versions of it hasn't been very widely adopted yet and remains somewhat of an uncommon sight to most people.
• The Legend of Zelda series has been slowly drifting away from pure Medieval European Fantasy into Dungeon Punk, Ocean Punk and occasionally Steampunk with the inclusion of steam technologies in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and its sequel The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword goes as far as to include robots and Techno Wreckage.
• The Arcadia world in The Longest Journey and its sequel. Well, the part where The Empire of Azadi conquered, at least.
• Lunar: The Silver Star has this with a gigantic Base on Wheels called the Grindery that serves as the final dungeon (subverted in the remake Silver Star Story Complete, in which it is magic powered). There are also a number of steampunk enemies, including a boss called the Dragon Tank.
• The Skytown area in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is very steampunk-inspired (complete with enemies like Tinbots and Steam Lords), following in the footsteps of the cyberpunk-inspired Sanctuary Fortress area in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes.
• The first four Myst games fall into this category, since they take place in the early 1800's, and Atrus' technology, though not always using steam, is at least steampunk-inspired. Myst V and Uru take place in the present day, but ancient D'ni technology continues this tradition.
• The MMORPG (sort of) Neopets has a world called Moltara, where all the Neopian denizens that hail from it live underground in huge steam and lava-filled caverns, and the theme of the world is very obviously Steampunk influenced. There was even a plot involving it a while back.
• This is the whole PREMISE of the new MMORPG Neo Steam.
• New Legends combines wuxia with Steampunk, and somehow it works.
• The "passively multiplayer online game" known at the moment as The Nethernet (previously PMOG), is based on the concept of the internet as a battleground between order and chaos, and has quite a Steampunk/Clock Punk flavor, with part of the arsenal available to players including a "mechanical watchdog" for guarding websites and more besides, despite the somewhat cartoony illustration style and Applied Phlebotinum heavy tools which some classes have.
• Nitrome's Dirk Valentine and the Fortress of Steam and Steamlands. The former has all sorts of crazy machines from chain-launching guns, teleporters, flying platforms, "electro-tanks", and armoured "gaspoids" (small piloted pods that shoot toxic gases). The latter requires the player to build gigantic tank-like mobile fortresses and wage war against similar vehicles.
• Noblemen 1896 takes place in an alternate steampunkish world. The storyline has a mysterious Plague sweep across the US not long after the end of the Civil War, killing many and turning some into ghouls or vampires. A group of corporations decide that this is a perfect time to get rid of the federal government, forming the United Corporations and convincing many people that One Nation Under Copyright would be a grand idea. Both sides are using steam-powered machines (e.g. tanks) and even advanced Tesla technology, including teleportation, shields, and Tesla rifles. There are also airplanes, heavily-armed zeppelins, bomb-dropping balloons, and elephants with cannons on their backs because... why not?
• The Order: 1886 (which takes place in 1886) is a fairly light version of Steampunk, since the game has more in line with Gaslamp Fantasy than technology. Still, you do have radios transmitters, megastructures dominating the London cityscape, Tesla guns, and of course airships.
• The Northmen faction in ParaWorld make use of some Steampunk devices. While a steam battleship would probably not fit the trope (they existed in real life), steam tanks (which also existed, a bit rarer) are more fitting for the trope. This is Hand Waved by the fact that the parallel world lacks electricity.
• Pokémon Legends: Arceus is a Distant Prequel taking place during the Meiji Restoration, and the Poké Balls of the era are archaic to the point that they have a port at the very top that vents steam after a Pokémon is caught.
• The Professor Layton games have this, particularly in Professor Layton And The Unwound Future, where most of the game takes place in a steampunk aesthetic, although, it could be described as Clock Punk, but that's just splitting hairs.
• Ratchet & Clank Verse — especially installments from the seventh generation onwards — includes visual themes not unlike Steampunk. All the futuristic machinery is pretty shiny, but rough around the edges. The finale to the Future trilogy, A Crack in Time is a prominent example.
• The Vinci faction in RTS Rise of Legends are an example of clockpunk that creep into steampunk as they ramp up their technology tree — notably in the Steam Cannon, Steam Tank, Steam Fortress, and, eventually, a giant spider-crab robot known as the Land Leviathan. Hero Units Giacomo and The Doge also use steam-powered Humongous Mecha.
• The Room (Mobile Game) series takes on some steampunk elements in its later games, particularly Old Sins.
• RuneScape has a number of quest series that are full of steampunk. Elemental Workshop, the Penguin series (don't ask), the Dwarf series has some aspects, and a number of other series occasionally have the player operating some sort of machine that shouldn't exist in the Middle Ages.
• Sakura Taisen is a Steampunk franchise which takes place in an alternate version of the 1920s where, instead of World War I, there was a massive war between humans and demons. Now women are being trained in specialized suits of steam-powered mecha because they tend to have far higher spirit energy than men. Due to the games being relegated to Japan until Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love, it's more likely Westerners will be familiar with the anime or manga spinoffs.
• Second Life has a rather significant Steampunk population with entire regions devoted to roleplaying, including the Independent State of Caledon, City of New Babbage, Winterfell, and former City of Steelhead.
• An atmospheric, moody Visual Novel fan-translated in 2009 named Sekien no Inganock, though things are called by numerous different names.
• Shining Force and its sequel, Shining Force II, featured steam-powered armor, ships, and robots.
• Skies of Arcadia: Legends is steeped in a rustic Jules Vernian aesthetic, where The Sky Is an Ocean and Air Ships are the means of transport. You'll set sail to exotic lands and uncharted regions, in search of lost civilizations and ancient treasure beneath the moons of Arcadia — all of which is recorded in your journal as you progress. Even the world map is hand drawn to further reflect the setting.
• In Snoopy Flying Ace, the weapons Snoopy uses are outlandishly over the top, to a Ratchet and Clank degree. The weapons and airplanes are steam punk influenced, with a bit of comic book sci-fi thrown in. Also the Zeppelin doomsday devices.
• Machine Labyrinth from Sonic Rush Adventure is very steampunk, including steam cannons and pipes as level gimmicks.
• Steambot Chronicles (Bumpy Trot in Japan) utilizes large steam-powered trots for everything (except flying, because most Trotmobiles can't fly). The rest of the robots are powered by internal combustion engines. As illustrated when fuel prices (along with others) skyrocket when the desert oil wells are captured by the Bloody Mantis.
• SteamWorld Dig is steampunk with sentient robots in the Wild West, while SteamWorld Heist is steampunk with sentient robots IN SPACE.
• Another flash game example is the Stormwinds series. (It can be found on this website.)
• The Summon Night series mixes medieval Europe with railroads, modern factories, along with other things, resulting in Steampunk. This is a result of the game's universe being populated by beings from multiple other ones, bringing influences with them.
• The Swindle has steam-powered robots, cybernetics, and computers, with the main objective being to steal a master computer that risks the creation of an omnipresent surveillance state. It's 1849.
• The video game Syberia and its sequels are set in a mixture of Clock Punk and Steampunk towns, with the occasional Raygun Gothic setting. This is despite being in the present day. The games are about Romanticism Versus Enlightenment with the idea much was lost in the transition between the past and modern world.
• Tales of Innocence takes place in an industrialized world, an oddity for the Tales Series, which usually sticks to Medieval European Fantasy with Lost Technology. The intro prominently shows a steam train and a steam boat, and steam engines are referenced a few times.
• Teslagrad is set in a steampunk version of eastern Europe. The advanced technology seems to be entirely due to one wizard, however.
• They Are Billions is a steampunk Real-Time Strategy game set in the aftermath of a Zombie Apocalypse. Specifically, it's the 22nd Century after the apocalypse somewhere in the 2000's set civilization all the way back to Victorian times, and the climb back up took some interesting directions.
• The Thief game series has a generous mix of Darker and Edgier Steampunk and Clock Punk, especially in the second game with the Mechanist technology.
• Robot Louis Stevenson, Victorian Crow, the Victorian Tileset, and a few missions in the TimeSplitters series.
• Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams was about a manned space journey to Mars in an alternate 19th century.
• Unwritten Legends has a class centered around the creation and use of steampunk gear.
• The Goblins and Gnomes of the Warcraft series are steam punk fanatics, each trying to outdo the other with technological prowess.
• We Happy Few is set in a dystopian alternate reality where it's 1964, but everything is in a retrofuturistic steampunk style. In this timeline the Nazis invaded the British Isles, and in order to stop them the British did "a very bad thing"; so bad, the population is now mandated to take a drug called "Joy" which erases unpleasant memories.
• Wells has you wielding Steampunk weapons in a Steampunk world.
• The Wild ARMs JRPG series combines this with The Western and Scavenger World.
• Wizard101 has the some elements of this scattered throughout the spiral, the world of Marleybone's technology is in the middle of evolving to this from Clock Punk. They even have Golems based on it.
• The setting of We Need to go Deeper is heavily inspired by Jules Verne, with players taking control of a submarine in this style and exploring the depths of the Living Infinite.

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