Coming from The Naked Dev and Alterego Games, City of Springs is a steampunk adventure with stealth elements that will bring you on a journey of taking down a corrupt regime fuelled by an army of bots. What can you do in the face of such an overwhelming mechanical might? Why, build your own, of course!
City of Springs entered Steam Early Access today, January 31st, after being in development for several years. The game is expected to remain in Early Access for a year or two, with the final release featuring more quality-of-life changes, more quests, smoother gameplay and visuals, better performance, extra localizations, and massively reworked atmosphere.
I had a chance to spend a few hours in this early version of the game to share my thoughts and impressions of where the game is currently at, development-wise.
In City of Springs, you play as Val, a bright and inquisitive mechanic that lives with her sister Liz as one of the many unregistered citizens of Riveton. Ruled by Queen Alexandra, the city sees the elite prosper and live in abundance, while those stuck in the slums have to work day and night to receive rations that are barely enough.
Many of the NPCs you run into are cowed into submission and afraid to voice their discontent, lest it leads to even those little crumbs being taken away. And if that wasn’t enough, the citizens are further intimidated by the Queen’s army of mechs, patrolling the streets and spouting propaganda.
For the sake of her sister, Val is keeping her head down despite these daily injustices, but one mistake leads to a job going sideways and resulting in a tragedy. Grieving and angry, Val takes it into her own hands to fight back against the corruption.
Where the Queen and the city elite are protected by impressive robots, commonly referred to as Coppers, Val can build her own smaller drones to take them down. At first, you only have two very basic types, but as you progress through the game, do the main and the side quests, and dig through every nook and cranny of Riveton to collect scrap, you will amass enough resources to create better, stronger and more impressive bots that will further help you in your mission.
In addition to bots, you can use scrap to create powerful gadgets, allowing you to slow enemies, heal your own bots, and much more. Note that they only have a certain number of uses before you run out and have to build them anew, so make sure to use them sparingly!
Fighting the Queen’s Coppers is an entertaining (if a bit repetitive, at first) endeavor. The battles are happening in real time, with Val facing directly against a bot or a group of bots (who so far have been fighting her one after another in a series of 1v1’s). However, due to the nature of having to counter Coppers’ moves, such as summoning their own little bots or using an ability, and then having to land your own hits, it feels almost turn-based but dynamic nonetheless.
Your actions are determined by springpower, regenerated in real time, and used to create bots. During the battle, Val will comment on danger coming from a certain side, giving you an opportunity to counter-attack. Additionally, Coppers will have icons indicating an upcoming ability. Sometimes those can be quite nasty, basically wiping out the entirety of the bots you have summoned, so it works out for the best to hold your hand and not spam bots as soon as you have enough springpower to do so.
Sneaking up and engaging first puts you in a much more favorable position compared to being attacked first, so make good use of stealth!
Speaking of it, as you do quests, collect chests around the city and defeat the bots, you will be able to not only create new bots and gadgets for yourself, but also work on Val’s own talents. Those affect both the world exploration, combat, and just general comfort of playthrough:
- Improved Spring Windup – Springpower windup is faster during combat;
- Extra health;
- Extra running speed;
- Improved Springcoil – Val gets extra Springpower during combat. The difference from the first talent is that this affects the overall amount of available Springpower vs its recharge speed;
- Your handy scrapper that can destroy cameras and loudspeakers gets extra range, which makes stealth easier;
- And finally, for those who are as bad at stealth as me, the final talent makes Coppers and cameras take longer before spotting you and raising an alarm or attacking.
While fighting Coppers had been undoubtedly my favorite part of the game so far, especially on higher levels of difficulty when it becomes harder to counter and land your own hits, there are plenty of other activities you have to do before you can overthrow an evil regime.
The game features a great amount of content, even in Early Access you can expect to find 32 main quests and 43 sidequests that amount to 8 to 20 hours of gameplay, depending on your level of difficulty, how much exploration and how many side activities you decide to do.
Additionally, not all sidequests are made equal. Some, such as reading the text on statues and plaques, explore the game’s lore and shed some light on the story of how things turned out to be the way they currently are. Others require chasing chickens for a forgetful NPC, a number of times.
Still, in general, they are quite worth doing both for extra resources, and to see just how deeply wrong Riveton actually is. A woman losing her rations for her child being seen outside one too many times, a neighbor fighting the ministry over a vegetable garden (no growing food for you, since it would make one less afraid of the ration cut!), an entire part of the city being left without support just to it can go to the richer part of the city, and much more.
Helping NPCs out lets you see how people got browbeaten to a point where they are afraid to resist. Thankfully, that’s where Val comes in with her handmade bots and a resolute sense of justice.
A lot of quests will also require you sneaking into forbidden zones – because let’s face it, pretty much everything is forbidden anyhow – and having to rely on stealth to arrive at a needed location and finish your task. The stealth mechanics are pretty basic – you crouch and hide behind objects, seeing the line of sight of enemies and cameras. Cameras can be destroyed by your handy scrapper, bots can be distracted with certain objects or simply outsmarted.
Don’t forget to unlock fast travel points as you move around the city, those will make your life much easier. And note that there are different types of Coppers, and while some can be engaged, most of those present during the stealth missions, especially during the main quest, go immediately for Val without a chance of fair fight.
The early game is a bit confusing – not the setting or character motivation, there’s plenty of that. Early on, it feels like the events are happening around Val, with her sort of floating around from NPC to NPC without a clear goal in mind, taking on little things that have barely anything to do with one another. Just another steampunk day filled with small tasks, a helpful neighbor ready to land a hand, far from the glorious revolutionary hero you might imagine.
However, as you continue playing on, you will meet other characters who are also unhappy over how things are going and are actually ready to do something about it – with your help, of course. Val will also learn some pretty important secrets, related both to the game’s world, the city of Riveton itself, and even how the politics of the city are not at all what they seem like.
That is something for you to find out in deeper detail if you decide to join the City of Springs community! Your opinion will help The Naked Dev shape the game going forward. Instead, let’s talk about the current state of the title. First things first, City of Springs is currently in Early Access and is not the final version of the game. It also isn’t a few patches away from it, either. The game needs work across several areas:
While the general aesthetic and atmosphere are on point, the game’s sound design and visuals would benefit from receiving some love. At the moment, Coppers are stuck saying the same half a dozen phrases, including on engaging Val, using abilities, and more. If you have fought one, you have fought them all, voicelines-wise. Cameras sound suspiciously like heart monitors, while music barely exists outside of cutscenes – except for the one tense theme when you’re surrounded by Enforcer-type Coppers and are in danger.
A similar thing can be said about the character models. While Val is just about alright, many of the NPCs can and frequently will be looking quite uncanny, especially when it comes to facial animations.
The final and probably the biggest drawback right now is the game’s optimization. Considering the overall gameplay and graphics of City of Springs, it can be unexpectedly demanding even on high-end machines that surpass the recommended system requirements.
To sum it up, City of Springs is a promising steampunk action-adventure, currently available in Early Access. The game features an interesting narrative and an engaging gameplay loop, while also requiring some extra love on sound design, visuals, and performance.
Early gameplay and story can be a bit boring and slow on the uptake, but once you start getting into the thick of things, it’s hard to put the game down despite the existing flaws and rougher edges.