Clockwork Empires hits beta, brings big changes

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Inevitably, there's a Steam sale too.

We last checked in with Clockwork Empires—a game of industry and colonialism set in a Weird Victoriana world—back in December 2014, when Gaslamp Games added scientists and bizarre artefacts to their simmy strategy game. It's about time for a follow-up, then, not least because Clockwork Empires has just hit beta. Here's a trailer announcing that, while revealing a few of the new features the update brings:

Those features include a workshop ordering system, a quality-of-life system for your colonists, and the ability for them to carry stacks of ingredients, rather than lumbering over with ingredients one at a time. Handy! There are also new events, UI improvements, and a ton of fixes—just have a look at the whopping patch notes if you don't believe me.

In an email to PC Gamer, Gaslamp explains its reasoning behind slapping a 'beta' tag on its game. Basically, CE stopped "feeling like an alpha"; you can now "really see and interact with the structure that is going to be filled out as we put in more cosmic horror-themed content and more events for the player to experience". 

In celebration of the occasion, the early access Clockwork Empires is having a Steam sale for the next day and a bit. You can currently grab it for 34% off the normal price.

Tom Sykes
Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.