City of Steam is a steampunk-themed MMO/ARPG that pushes the Unity engine to deliver quality 3D/HDTV game play through a state of the art. I ended up with an Alpha key to the game after my attempts to get by buying an auctioned key off listia that seemed to have been used for over a week during the third weekend Alpha stress test. But after talking with support at the CoS site I was given a usable legitimate Alpha Key and proceeded to install and prepare for the last Alpha weekend gameplay.This is definitely a steampunk gearworks game, automatons, AirShips and gear mechs . I won’t be giving away too much on the storyline, the core game as a whole is recovering from a major mishap and you start out as a refugee among others and your family.

After logging in at the City-state of Nexus, character creation and class are in order. You have 9 races, a male or female for every race and four classes to choose from. I played as a Riven Gunner. When you get involved, the game takes you through a short tutorial basically teaching you how to interact with the UI and how the switches and and bells and whistles work. The tutorial is mandatory you have to go through it to get to the city . User Interface, pretty standard, Avatar and map topside, you have chat, skill stats and resource bars on bottom left hand side by defualt.

Some the cool points of the game.

The opening screen. Very well represented and designed.
The art. was well addressed for a steampunk genre game, it’s has the gears, and clockworks that anyone want for.
The Salvage option. you can turn stuff you’ve picked up and turn it to something useful during quests and such. Not bad if you like to play the pack rat type of adventurer.
The Bad

I get why the tutorial there, when it’s the first time it’s very useful, but afterwards they should add in a optional check box before release of the game itself.
Popups in the tutorial could be set as an optional script. It just takes away the gaming experience.
Programmable keys hot keys would be a nice optional add in. .

The wants
Jump and Double jump if possible
Supposedly and this is just rumor mill but the optional of horses and maybe even steam based vehicles will be allowed for your character after release day at some point, then again it’s a rumor.

Swap characters while you’re logging out and building up your other character. It’s just not there as an option at the moment it seems. Let’s hope they can make that correction before release day.

Gameplay was smooth, there were no glitchy animation errors but there was block volume corrections that I pointed out and reported in some of the areas. I can tell, that the enemy AI are somewhat intelligent and responsive attack in hordes if you’re not watchful.
After completing the tutorial you’ll arrive at the city and after that you’re free to do you please. There are quests aplenty to complete on several post boards throughout the town, plus you can go exploring dungeons, hop on a train to the next area if you want. Some of the dungeons designed for single-player are fun to dive into so partying up is optional as well and slightly fun for all too.

Obviously City of steam is still under development and in need a few corrections in block volume and texturing tearing in some areas, but I approve of what I’ve seen so far. Access is easy all you have to do is install the unity player and the game runs in your browser (I used Chrome myself) . On low settings the unity engine is quite balanced even on the lower end machine you can get a semi-decent FPS count 45/60. The detailing was superb you could get a sense of immersion to it. I loved the fact that it tries to pull you in and in some cases succeeds in doing so. I will say this was one Alpha test I didn’t mind one bit.