I like steampunk. It’s a weird little genre that simply hasn’t been explored enough in popular fiction. Sure, there are a few notable exceptions, such as The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling (two of my favorite cyberpunk authors), but for the most part, steampunk has been relegated to the occasional game art direction or comicon party theme. There’s a subculture for it, but it’s small and odd and we just miss out on such things. It’s a shame too, because the idea of the tech revolution taking place in the Victorian age allows for a rich tapestry of conceptual fiction that we just aren’t getting.
Into this wasteland of steampunk enters the Steam Highwayman: Smog and Ambuscade from Cubus Games for iOS and Android, based on the book by Martin Nouch. The Steam Highwayman is originally a gamebook created by Nouch and funded on Kickstarter in 2017. If you’re not familiar with gamebooks, think Choose-Your-Own-Adventure but with stats and dice-rolling, more like a mix of CYOA books and Dungeons & Dragons. The genre was huge in the pre-tech 80s with a wide variety of fantasy and sci-fi gamebooks available. Now, the genre is essentially dead, but The Steam Highwayman absolutely nails the vibe of those old gamebooks.
The mobile game is much the same as the book in terms of design. You choose your starting backstory and are immediately engaged in a Victorian steampunk epic, blasting across the countryside in your velosteam (steam-powered motorcycle) to right wrongs, escape persecution, or simply get your cut. There is no shortage of choices in the Steam Highwayman. Good, evil, they’re all just different options and they all have their positives and negatives. What there is an abundance of however is choice. The game is structured exactly like a traditional gamebook, giving you written dialogue, a choice of options at the end of each segment, and the occasional skill check or combat dice roll. As you make your choices, the game branches out increasingly into a complex web of options, depending on where you go. The map is surprisingly large and the options seem intimidating at first, especially with no real directions given. You’re never forced to take a particular path in the Steam Highwayman and this can lead either to random wandering or some significant conflict.
Every story will be different so it’s impossible to give a synopsis of the plot in the Steam Highwayman. Eventually, you’ll manage to either come to a conclusion of some sort or, well, die. This is where things get tricky. If you’re expecting a casual phone game here, you might want to keep walking. The Steam Highwayman is anything but a casual game, and that’s a bit odd for a phone game. You must read and pay attention to salient details in the dialogue, extract the key information, and then utilize what you’ve learned to navigate the map and find your way to the next adventure within the game. If it sounds difficult, that’s because it absolutely is. This is not a game that hold your hand in any way. The game map is vast and roads are not straight or carefully delineated on the map, and even just finding your way to a given town can take time and a plethora of mistaken choices. It’s honestly frustrating when you’re told to go visit an old woman three towns over and you can’t simply choose the roads to get to town. It’s even worse when you get there and haven’t got any food for her so you end up doing nothing of import and walking away afterwards, failing to advance the storyline or improve your character.
It’s the details in the Steam Highwayman that mar gameplay. Map navigation is really challenging, since you can’t select areas and fast travel, and not all roads are labeled. Once you realize you can’t just make selections willy-nilly, you’ll end up constantly checking the map to see if you’re going the right way, a distracting procedure. Once you get there, the game shows all the options you haven’t managed to activate, taunting you with a depth of play that you’re unable to experience without considerable effort. While all the options are presented, they simply don’t always work. If you’re told about a mechanic who needs a job, you can’t just go and see him (normal game logic). Instead, you have to find the job for him first or the options for contact are greyed out. Where is that job? Let me know when you find it, I’m still looking.
On top of the innate complexity of the Steam Highwayman in terms of structure and map use, there’s also a combat dimension to the game. As you steam across the countryside, you’ll have random skill checks and encounters, each of which requires a dice roll. Succeed in the dice roll and, um, nothing happens. This is a big failing in the game because random events could absolutely advance the plot if a player is struggling to find money, get keywords, or unlock missions, but here they serve no valuable purpose most of the time. Fail and there are usually penalties, and rolling digital dice feels somewhat unfair. This problem expands with combat, where you have to roll above a certain number to succeed and the game feels almost rigged with how difficult it is to make combat rolls. Regardless of your rolls, enemies tend to hit harder and roll higher than you and the balance just feels off. Chances are good you’ll die if you fight even the weakest opponents.
It’s important to note here that this is a game that’s designed for you to gradually build up the skills and inventory of your character and work his reputation up bit by bit. The Steam Highwayman is very reminiscent of old Car Wars gamebooks from Steve Jackson games, in that it’s a fantastic concept with a brutal difficulty curve that leaves players feeling like they either can’t succeed or have to cheat to do so. Unlike Car Wars however, you can’t cheat in the Steam Highwayman, forcing you to start over and hope you can remember all the branches you chose if combat goes poorly (it will). However, if you’re incredibly patient and tenacious and you want to slowly learn the map and pathways around Marlow and the surrounding towns and villages, you can absolutely slowly work your way up to a legend in the countryside, a hero to the masses, and a villain to the rich in true Robin Hood style. Or just beat up some dudes and steal their money. But either way, it’s going to take a lot of patience, items, and luck to read your way through the dense text of the Steam Highwayman.
As mentioned, the map is outstanding, looking like a traditional vintage map and the whole game maintains that same excellent graphic design. Fonts are easy to read, the user interface is slick and responsive, and the occasional imagery included is well-drawn and interesting. This is honestly a gorgeous game and the UI is simply fantastic. The music accompanying gameplay is quite well-done too and the whole experience from a gameplay standpoint is one of polish, precision, and excellent design choices.
That’s not to say the writing is bad either. It absolutely isn’t. This is a well-written script that’s interesting and cool. The map is spectacular. The overall concept is great. But the difficultly curve is unforgiving and will likely dissuade all but the most dedicated players from pursuing the true depth available in the Steam Highwayman. For $4, you’re getting a lot of game here, but the game expects as much of you as you might of it. It’s hard not to love the Steam Highwayman: Smog and Ambuscade, but it’s also hard to recommend it unequivocally. This is guaranteed to be a love-it-or-hate-it title, much like the gamebooks of the 80s. If you like reading, like the idea of steampunk, or are a steampunk fan though, the Steam Highwayman is a singularly unique experience that’s worth your time to check out. Just make sure you’re the patient sort!
This review was based on a digital copy of Steam Highwayman: Smog and Ambuscade provided by the publisher. It was played on a Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus and worked perfectly with no issues or crashes. Steam Highwayman: Smog and Ambuscade is also available for Apple phones on iOS. All images are of actual gameplay.