Caesar With Cogs - Lethis: Path of Progress Trailer
Steampunk city builder
The vintage build 'em ups of Impressions Games (them lot behind Caesar and Pharaoh) were cited as influences in the announcement of steampunk city-builder Lethis: Path of Progress [official said] last month, but oh me oh my I hadn't realised it'd be quite so much like them. A new six-minute gameplay trailer shows the early stages of establishing a city, starting from tents, caravans, and a whole lot of mud, and yep, this sure is Impressions-y. If you dug those, you'll likely dig this.
The steampunk angle doesn't quite come into play at this early stage of a city, but Lethis will kick right on through big industrial revolutions with grand buildings and spiderbots. Handling the dirty bits and social problems industrialisation brings will be a challenge as well as plain old city-optimising. Along with challenge missions, it'll have a sandbox mode to build your steampunk dreams. Forge an opulent city, have those whose blood it cost rise up, smash the looms, extinguish the boilers, tear it all down, return to the forests, return to the seas, dive down, bury ourselves in the mud, become diamonds, vaporise in the death throes of the sun, end with the universe.
Developers Triskell Interactive plan to release Path of Progress later this year. Lethis is to be a wider steampunk universe they'll set more games in.