Just Like: Clockwork Empires Coming To Early Access

John got to play Clockwork Empires during GDC, and he became instantly and irrevocably reviled by the rest of the RPS Hivemind. We might have evolved beyond such base pursuits as love, non-telepathic word-o-mancy, and ever doing anything other than playing games and furiously scribbling about them long ago, but boy do we do jealousy well. I daresay we do jealousy at a 14 millionth grade level. So John will continue to wilt under the minimal pressure of our passive-aggressive ire, because goodness gracious does Clockwork Empires' fusion of simulation, oddball steampunk antics, and peerless AI sound magnificent. Good-ish news, though: John Q Public Nathan Q Me will be able to play it this summer. It's so close, yet so far away.

Dungeons of Dredmor developer Gaslamp made the announcement/slight delay official in a blog post:

"We have spent an intense few weeks considering our plans for the next few months, and as a result, we’ve decided to push back early access of Clockwork Empires to the summer. It’s a short delay from our original release window for early access, but a delay nonetheless."

"Almost everyone who has played the current version of Clockwork Empires can see the promise of what we want the game to be when it’s done. The message that we keep hearing is 'don’t force this game out the door until it’s ready, because it will be really special when it is,' and we want it to be there when you play it.  In the spirit of transparency, starting early access this spring would not allow us to give you that – close, but not quite hitting the mark yet."

Understandable. I didn't actually know it was coming to Early Access at all (though I sort of suspected), so this still counts as good news in my book.

This is definitely one to watch, as it contains AIs that procedurally share memories and - as you would expect - use them to form cults that bend knee only to the oozing-est of Eldritch horrors. And also soldiers who will learn, organically - not because they're programmed to do it - to drink their pains away. And heaps of possible personality traits. And fish people! Promise abounds. I really, really, really hope Clockwork Empires manages to tick all of those boxes instead of ticking people off. For now, however, we wait. Tick-tock, tick-tock.