Nintendo unveiled a new exclusive game for the Nintendo 3DS entitled Code Name: Steam in a question-and-answer panel at the Electronics Entertainment Expo 2014.
The steam in the game's title stands for Strike Team Eliminating the Alien Menace. The game will feature cel-shaded, colorful cartoon graphics in a 19th-century London environment inspired by steampunk, where all the machinery is powered by steam.
Code Name: Steam is a turn-based strategy game that will include elements from third-person action and shooting games. Steam is a group formed by Abraham Lincoln that is tasked to defend the world from an alien invasion. Players will use different units of up to four members and combat monsters to suppress the alien threat. There will also be some elements of exploration in the game, along with the ability to switch between characters in a first-person point of view.
It is the latest game from Intelligent Systems and has Hotshi Yamagami at the helm, whose previous projects include the Pokemon and Fire Emblem series and Xenoblade Chronicles.
"As you can tell from my history, I have been working with Intelligent Systems for a long time and became a big fan of turn-based strategy, but I've always wanted to share these games with more people; this has been quite a challenge for me," Yamagami said during the game's presentation.
Paul Patrascu, the game's creative director, said that he shared the same sentiments with Yamagami in wondering why strategy games don't have a larger following.
"The answer I came up with myself, perhaps in many strategy games, there is too much abstraction between the player and the game world," Patrascu said. This is because how the game unfolds in most turn-based strategy games is dictated by numbers and parameters that can't be seen by the player, along with abstract interfaces that put up a barrier between the player and the game.
The game features a zoomed-in third-person point of view, which is different from other turn-based strategy games that usually use a top-down or isometric view. Characters in the game use "action units" in the form of steam, which determine the speed and distance of a character's movement and the number of attacks that can be performed. Characters carry boilers on their backs to represent how much steam they have.
To make a turn-based strategy game less intimidating, the game uses fewer HUD (head-up display) elements with no compass or mini-map. Switching between the viewpoints of the characters will allow the player to study the layout of the map to plan their strategy to beat the enemies.
Code Name: Steam will be released in 2015.
