History! Science! Steampunk’d.

The typical fare when you think “alternate universe” is ultra-modernized, sped-up and shiny, with floating cars. Like the Jetsons, but a bit grittier. However, there’s a new retro-futuristic that’s gaining popularity and esteem. While most other science fiction/fantasy game settings out there deal with what is most otherworldly, Steampunk threatens to go back in history and draw something much closer to both literature and historical context. It threatens, in short, to make history fun.

Steampunk began as a type of fiction based around eras in which steam power were used (19th century), and focuses on the technologies and inventions making breakthroughs at the given time, à la H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.

But what’s so great about that? Like the works of the aforementioned authors, Steampunk explores the possibilities of these inventions, the alternate realities and imagined futures associated with this time of progress and revolutionary change, a landscape full of incredible possibility. It is a setting in which small ideas become big ones, when science was something ordinary people could grasp, when the future was promising and intimidating.

Steampunk both makes us eerily aware of technology’s potential power and nostalgic about the transition between the past few centuries. It is this progress gone wrong, or right, which has fascinated science fiction writers and readers, and which translates into other media now. The reader, and now the player, has some personal investment, because this could, potentially, be the world we make or destroy. Going back, we learn about and re-inhabit a very different time.

Where does the fun come in? Well, such a landscape provides fertile adventure and prospects for a hero. In a Steampunk game, you feel like you are responsible for the future, a recycled concept that is re-illuminated in the context of the game’s plot.

Elements of many games have come close to Steampunk— in World of Warcraft, the city of Gnomeregan is run on steam power; Skies of Arcadia takes a futuristic twist inspired by early aviation. But the technologies aren’t so much interactive as they are decorations. Few have given a dedicated interpretation of all that is Steampunk, and few have thrown open the world of gaming to Steampunk.

In order to figure out how Steampunk has influenced gaming and where it’s going, let’s take a look at some games which have and will feature Steampunk as a main element.

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura is a game dedicated entirely and obviously to Steampunk, integrating it amongst classic fantasy elements (elves, dwarves, and orcs). While critically well-received, it remains generally out of the mainstream. Though heavily Steampunk, with the technology incorporated into gameplay, it also deviates heavily from Steampunk’s literary and historical roots.

In Thief, a much more mainstream franchise, the setting is a Steampunk metropolis, both retro and futuristic. Its tools and gameplay rely on simplicity and sneakiness, less on head-bashing, blowing things up, guns-and-adrenaline-oriented shooters that are the basic guidelines of science fiction games.

But the big daddy (no pun intended) of Steampunk gaming goodness is Bioshock. The game has sold 1.83 million to date and has made a gigantic splash in the gaming world. At the core of the game rests the idea of choice, of the character doing something right or wrong in the end. This comes back to the idea of progress, and the individual’s importance.

Is Bioshock pure Steampunk though? There is debate. There’s certainly the Jules Verne influence—from the city under the water to the very appearance of the mascot, “Big Daddy.” who sports a sexy diving helm, the lure of the deep unknown is explored and imagined fully. And the aesthetics are retro-futuristic: gears and steam set in an alternate universe where the technology progressed in a different manner than our own.

Steampunk is about the lure of the unknown, the bread and butter of Bioshock. So if you ask me, Bioshock is as Steampunk as it gets.

What’s next? Well, Dark Cloud 3, Recoil: Retrograde, and possibly Thief 4 are looming on the horizon. If Bioshock is any indication, these will be hits. Personally, I love what Steampunk represents, and I think a lot of gamers feel the same way.