Video Game / A Study in Steampunk

A Study in Steampunk: Choice by Gaslight is an independently produced Interactive Fiction game, written by Heather Albano and hosted by Choice of Games' user submitted label Hosted Games.

The game begins with the player character, an officer in the Medical Corps of the Mercian Imperial Army in its war against the Vlaski Empire. After being seriously injured in a rescue mission on a Vlaski prison camp, you return to the Mercian capital of Kingsford and take up a position under Arthur Woodward, a minor official in the Mercian Government, working alongside part-time newspaper photographer and fellow agent Garrett Finch.

It is available here.

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A Study in Steampunk provides examples of the following tropes:

• Always Chaotic Evil: All the Vlaskesari encountered or mentioned over the course of the game are malevolent to at least some degree. Their home country, Vlask, is depicted as unfailingly brutal, tyrannical, and expansionist, serving as an easy enemy for any possible protagonist.
• Aura Vision: The Nigel-Trevelyan Glass enables this as applied to light-eaters. It captures and visualizes the irregular electromagnetic waves emitted by light-eaters, which makes them appear shrouded in red while the rest of the populace appear white-gold.
• Ban on Magic: Being "sun-touched" or "sun-blessed" is not illegal per se, and neither is using the power to heal. However, anyone who has or shows such an ability is barred from polite society, which, for a doctor, means losing your medical license (you can still practice, but only as a "healer" helping the poor and making no money) and being relegated to the slums.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: The game's prologue is replete with the player character's horrified reactions to light-eating and coming out of a prison break raid with a serious case of PTSD over what he experiences there. Over the course of the game, he can potentially become a murderous light-eating maniac, supplanting the Ripper and resulting in a Nonstandard Game Over. Even without going off the deep end, light-eating still remains a viable option in combat encounters.
  • Likewise, though the player character starts the game as a member of Woodward's "irregulars" black-ops force in service of the Mercian empire, he can later defect to the revolutionaries from Free Mercia fighting against it and directly opposed by Woodward's people. Alternatively, he can join the Sun Temple, which is aligned with the moderate wing of Free Mercia, though it is up to the player whether he renounces his Rationalist viewpoints entirely, reconciles them with sun-worship and healing, or is trapped in the Temple without agreeing with its principles.
• Betty and Veronica: A shining example in Grace Chandler as Betty and Alexandra Townsend as Veronica. Grace is a simple, honest and highly conventional woman, described as not being a blazing beauty, while Alexandra is a gorgeous and daring actress-turned-rebel introduced committing a blatant act of terrorism.
• Big Bad: The Vlasekari and their Vlask Empire. Notably, they're the Big Bad regardless of whether in the end you work for the Mercian government, the Free Mercia movement, or the Sun Temple, although for different reasons: the Mercian government hates Vlask for historical and geopolitical reasons, the Free Mercia movement hates the Vlaskesari for cruelly dominating their serfs, and the Sun Temple considers the practice of light-eating to be repulsive, as being sun-touched is meant to be a blessing used to heal others.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: The "Conventional/Unconventional" stat measures exactly how long your bunny ears are. A particular example comes from the Sun Temple path should the player choose to return to work for Woodward to take down the Ripper, as the player character will be seen as an outsider by his former colleagues but tolerated by Woodward because of his talents and experience being very helpful in their work.
• Cast from Hit Points: Using their healing powers draws upon a sun-touched person's Life Energy.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: The game opens with the protagonist conducting a raid on a torture camp, and what he witnesses there leaves him shaken and traumatized. Later in the game, he and Finch both undergo torture for information and are forced to break out to survive.
• Corrupt Church: The Vlask version of the solar faith is presided over by nobles that literally drain the life out of their subjects to keep themselves youthful and ageless.
• Da Chief: Woodward is the boss of your little "irregular" police force, and devoted to peace and order in his city. But he's also a rigidly-conservative man with a hot temper.
• Downer Ending: The Ripper path leads to you either being turned into an enslaved Super-Soldier for Woodward, dying at Finch's hands, or being killed by the real Ripper after descending into purely animalistic madness. The only escape is to join the Temple.
• The Empire: Both of the great powers of the setting, Vlask and Mercia, are militaristic, nationalistic and expansionist. Vlask is depicted as a wholly vicious and backwards society bent on conquest, but Mercia is not so different, the main point of divergence between them resting in their respective stances on sun-worship.
• Enemy Mine: The core of the Resistance and the government secret police join forces to defeat the Professor's plan to give over Mercia into the hands of the Vlaskesari in the third act.
• Expy: Finch is Sherlock Holmes, complete with Faking the Dead for two years without telling you. Woodward is Mycroft and the Professor is Moriarty down to the Loegrian/Irish origins and multi-talented criminal genius. More-broadly, Mercia is a more-advanced portrait of Victorian Britain, while Vlask is a nightmare portrait of Tsarist Russia with a little Transylvania. Alexandra Townsend and the opera singer Madame Adela Albsecu could both be considered counterparts for Irene Adler in different ways, and Colonel Fearnley is a pretty clear analogue to Colonel Moran, complete with big-game hunting. The treatment of sun-worshippers, meanwhile, is a reference to English Catholicism, and Loegria is Ireland, complete with parallels to the suppression of their culture and religion.
  • The HMS Colossus luxury cruise airship is clearly inspired by the Titanic, widely celebrated as a great achievement in shipbuilding, but suffering from a disaster on its maiden voyage as well as from a lack of lifeboats sufficient for the passengers and crew to abandon ship. However, the Colossus is crippled not by an iceberg, but by a La Résistance operative through an act of sabotage, and the ship is saved by the actions of Finch and the player character.
  • The author has also pointed to the Lusitania disaster as an inspiration for the Colossus:
    I'm not sure this quite conveys either the terror or heroism of the eighteen minutes it took the Lusitania to sink. The time frame here needs to be a little longer, but I want this to feel frantic, not like Titantic's slow death song, and I want one of the frantic-making factors to be the lack of drills wrt/ lifeboat lanching and lifejacket wearing, nobody on the crew or among the passengers quite knows what to do, people running to find family members and lifejackets. (All taken from the Lusitania story.)
  • Even the Cholera Outbreak is an homage: specifically to the investigation of the Broad Street Pump Outbreak. Where Dr. John Snow (yes, really) investigated on the ground as it happened. Later elaborated on with the aide of one Reverend Henry Whitehead, who provided further information from the public who trusted him, not unlike Alexandra or Taggart. Though years after the fact, instead of during the outbreak. It was a major step in proving germ theory & the founding of epidemiology.
• Face–Heel Turn: There's nothing stopping you from siding with Vlask against Mercia.
• Faking the Dead: Finch. The player character can either forgive him for the deception or sever all ties in response to this.
• Fantastic Racism: Many people versus the sun-touched.
• Femme Fatale: Adela Albescu, the opera singer from Vlask and the Crown Prince's mistress, unsurprisingly turns out to be one. Alexandra Townsend is a toned-down example, but still uses her stunning beauty and charm in her operations for Free Mercia.
• Foreshadowing: The Professor seems rather indifferent to the loss of life or livelihood of average Mercians in his pursuit to topple the Mercian government. This shows he cares nothing for Mercia and plans to give it over to Vlask for Loegria's, his own country which is ruled by Mercia, freedom.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Mercia is basically a recreation of Victorian Britain, complete with the British parliament and monarchy systems, but also given a radically rationalist, anti-religious and anti-magical ideology. Loegria is a direct stand-in for Ireland culturally, religiously and politically, to the point where the names could technically be swapped. Vlask is unmistakably meant to portray Russia, using Russian-specific terms and names, but transforms the society into a backwardly feudalistic, retrograde magocracy with the Muggles serving as a source of nourishment for the Supernatural Elite of vampiric light-eaters and kept in line by a hideously Corrupt Church. Other countries mentioned are Bretagne, Almania and Goraska, seemingly derived from France, Germany and Romania respectively, but little detail is available; all of them are under Mercian occupation/vassaldom, with Goraska being contested between Mercia and Vlask.
• Fictional Counterpart: The entire cholera outbreak, including the Broad Street pump being the source of the disease thanks to tainted water and building a map to identify where the disease clusters, closely mirrors the real-life work of John Snow, the father of epidemiology.
• Gay Option: Given that the main character is an ex-military doctor with a war wound and his roommate is a brilliant detective with weak social skills, it is perhaps unsurprising that Finch counts as one.
• Good Old Ways: The sun-worshippers believe that the use of hands is sacred, and that modern technology interferes with this and so is against their religion. The player character can make them more flexible by pointing out that bandages and such require the use of hands as well.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Mercia has thrown off the yoke of an abusive theocracy to become an advanced and progress-focused nation, but its rigidly conservative and rationalist society embodies all the nastier aspects of industrialized Victorian Britain. The Resistance does have some good points about workers' rights and the need for reform, but they are also a band of criminals whose terror-tactics sometimes cause collateral damage, and whose leader is more concerned with freedom for Loegria and revenge on Mercia than his organization's high-minded goals. And while the Mercian branch of the Sun Temple might presently embody the sort of simple virtue and compassion that best represents its faith, it is also hide-bound with old traditions and resistant to even positive changes like modern medicine, and it idealizes its past a bit too much for comfort. Only Vlask, with its barbaric, feudal lifestyle and abusive, life-sucking immortal boyars, is wholly unsympathetic and evil.
• Healing Hands: Ideally, this is how the sun-touched use their power.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: The player character can, depending on the playthrough, change sides several times as well as fall prey to their untrained sun-touched potential, become a serial killer and then seek redemption at the Sun Temple.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Turning yourself in to Woodward upon your Heel Realization in the Ripper path results in Woodward inducting the player character into his secret light-eater army and brainwashing them into mindlessness.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: If you choose, you can play a straight male character, happily married to Grace Chandler, and yet still be very close friends with Garrett Finch. Though the 'heterosexual' part for Finch is debatable.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Possible for the player character if you choose to become a vigilante life-drinker in the East End.
• I Did What I Had to Do: When dealing with the cholera outbreak, the best option is to refuse to help anyone individually and focus on tracking the epidemiology of the disease and finding the pump. Every minute you waste in saving the life of a sick baby means that more people will die because they're still drinking from a contaminated water source. Then again, not having a good reputation in the community has its own consequences down the line.
• Incompatible Orientation: Should the player choose to play a heterosexual character, Finch will still remain in love with them.
• Ki Manipulation: The sun-touched have many analogous powers. The Mercian Sun Temple also has those trained to hunt down and defeat light-eaters who have trained to use their power to throw qi-blasts.
• La Résistance: The Free Mercia movement is directly referred to as "the Resistance" by its members.
• Lies to Children: The player can listen in on a lesson given in the solar chapel about a noble traveling healer. When he points out to Taggart that the real history of the solar religion was much more nuanced than that, the Father says that these are very young children who need to learn about the ideals of the solar church before they learn the darker truths, particularly given the bent of the society around them.
• Life Drinker: "Light-eating" is the hideous practice of sucking out another being's life force to fuel one's own. Originally, the old solar priests were only supposed to do so to top off between heals, and only with the consent of their parishioners, and the current Solar Temple in Mercia still does it that way, but the Vlask Empire is ruled by men and women who do so as their "right" over their serfs... or to torture prisoners of war.
• Liquid Courage: When the player character meets Grace for the first time, he can drink a whiskey for courage before asking her to dance.
• Maybe Ever After: Befriend Alexandra Townsend without actually hooking up with her, get her and Woodward to work together and stop the Rising, and she'll mention that you and she were star-crossed... allies. Which seems to leave things open.
• The Mole: The player character, if following the Empire/Woodward path, infiltrates the Resistance in order to prevent the Rising from being launched fully and on time.
• My Fist Forgives You: Woodward reveals that Finch is alive and he knew for two years. One response is to punch him in the face and storm off. If you go back, he acts as though nothing happened.
• Noble Bigot: Miss Chandler is an intelligent, brave, good-hearted woman, but being straightforward with her about your sun-touched nature and about having used your powers (if you have) is too much for her to accept. She will immediately break off a relationship if you do — although to her credit, she promises not to reveal your secret, which would ruin your life if it got out, and doesn't.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: Professor Callahan, the leader of Free Mercia, is only using his organization to get back at Mercia for occupying and oppressing his homeland, Loegria, and secure its freedom by way of allying with Vlask to crush the Mercian empire.
• Our Vampires Are Different: They're called light-eaters and drain lifeforce through skin contact instead of sucking blood, enabling unnatural extension of the light-eater's lifespan and healing of their wounds at the cost of others' energy or lives. The ability/condition is hereditary and may surface where it is least expected, and also addictive, making its bearers prone to serial killing and accounting for the fear of light-eating among the general populace. The Vlask Empire's entire nobility caste is such: the Vlaski boyars are alluded to be night-immortal through draining the lifeforce of their serfs. Naturally, this being a Interactive Fiction game, your protagonist possesses the ability to become one.
• Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: The major difference between Mercia and actual Victorian Britain is that Mercia is a rigidly atheistic society, to the point of discrimination against sun-worshippers. This is a byproduct of overthrowing a horribly abusive theocracy not much better than modern Vlaski's.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Woodward, to his credit, almost never lets his conservative prejudices blind him to the possibility that something different from what he expects might be going on if the player supplies evidence. And Taggart, the Father of the local solar church the player can visit and even befriend, is an eminently reasonable man who refuses to let his flock use violence and reacts to police searches with saintly patience. He also considers the practice of light-eating to be repulsive, and freely admits that maybe it was partially a good thing that the Sun Temples' power was broken, as some of them had been violating the central tenets of their faith by light-eating.
• Rebellious Rebel: Alexandra Townsend, once Professor Callahan is revealed to be the Vlaskesari's man on the inside planning to sell Mercia out to them in exchange for Loegria. The player character as well, if he has been following the Free Mercia path.
• Religion is Magic: Or rather, magic is religion in the form of sun-worship and the healing/draining abilities of the sun-touched.
• Saintly Church: The solar chapel the player can visit partway through the game represents everything right about their faith, eschewing violence and taking care of the poor and miserable without taking advantage of them. One of the branching paths involves the player joining it as a full-time member.
• Secret Police: Woodward's "irregulars" operate just like one, albeit without an official organizational structure. You start out as one of them, but further developments in your chosen path can change that and even pit you against them.
• Serial Killer: The Ripper, naturally. The player character can also become one depending on the choices you choose to make.
• Sherlock Scan: Finch, naturally. The player character can also learn to do this if they raise their 'perception' stat high enough.
• Spanner in the Works: Professor Callahan's favoured strategy, dubbed by him "sand in the gears" in comparison to a war mech being crippled in desert condition. This is exactly how Callahan's Rising is sabotaged and the Vlask invasion prevented in the best endings, with Alexandra Townsend bringing up the "sand in the gears" phrase directly in reference to the actions intended to grind it to a halt.
• Supernatural Elite: The Sun Temples used to be The Magocracy where Religion is Magic for all of the known setting. In the present time, the Vlask empire is ruled by exclusively sun-touched nobility, who indulge freely in light-eating to extend their lifespan.
• Temporary Love Interest: Grace Chandler can be romanced and become the player character's wife in the second act, but the cholera outbreak in the third results either in her death (if the player character refuses to use his Healing Hands to save her, afraid to reveal his gift in the knowledge she is vehemently opposed to it) or in her breaking off the marriage (should she be saved). With the protagonist being a stand-in for Dr. Watson to Finch's Sherlock Holmes, this mirrors Watson's own marriage and loss of his wife in the Sherlock Holmes stories.
• There Is a God!: After Finch's supposed death, the player character (formerly a Rationalist) can join the sun-worshippers, although the extent to which he embraces their faith is up to the player.
• This Is Your Brain on Evil: Light-eating isn't just horrible: it's addictive, with light-eaters trying to redeem themselves suffering incredible cravings for the life force of other living things. The tainted wine that imparts temporary sun-touched powers has a similar withdrawal effect.
• Twice-Told Tale: A Holmes pastiche with the doctor as the main character.
• Vampire Monarch: The rulers of Vlask, just like all of Vlaskesari nobility, are light-eaters. The Vlaskesari plot to bring out the dormant sun-touch in the Mercian royal family's crown prince with a temporary dose of a drug, then lie to him that it is permanent in order to force him to defect.
• Velvet Revolution: In the best endings, the Resistance becomes a more-peaceful organization, while the government finally passes a Labor Bill and begins addressing their concerns, once they give their aid in ousting the Professor.
• You Are What You Hate: A Conventional protagonist has the option of standing in rigid denial of their own innate sun-touch.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Free Mercia, a pro-labour underground group, can be perceived as either depending on your protagonist's allegiances and opinions. Notably, its leadership can be convinced to abandon terrorist acts as a way to further their agenda. Definitely freedom fighters as far as Vlask is concerned, with Callahan essentially acting as their fifth column within Mercia.