I know some people are scared off by the phrase 'Early Access' because they don't want to deal with buggy games, but how can you not be intrigued by cited problems like "dead characters coming back to life to have conversations about communism" and "a small issue where colonists only sleep once in their lives"?
Clockwork Empires is a game that's all about the three C's: Colonization, Capitalism, and Cosmic Horror. You are a Junior Bureaucrat (Colonial Grade) in a Steampunkified Victorian era that's been tasked by the empire to secure their foothold (and purse strings) in the new world. You'll build colonies populated by characters from all levels of social strata, where every person has their own memories, personalities, and secrets. Your actions shape the fledgeling colony and the fates of the people that call it home. But no matter what you do, cracks will form in your little society. Disease, cultists, depression, mutant uprising, and murder most foul will crop up every now and again, so you'll probably have to deal with that. But then again, maybe you'll be responsible for the collapsing infrastructure. Will you overwork your populace in order to secure more of a profit for the empire? Or will you order your scientists to usher in a new technological era by having them study forces that man was not meant to comprehend?
Gaslight Games, the developers of Dungeons of Dredmor, have already had people testing Clockwork Empires in their own 'Earliest Access' version. But on August 15th, they'll make it available to the public through regular old Early Access for $29.99.
If you're on the fence on whether or not you want a dystopian civilization-building game, you should take a look at their hilarious weekly Devblog. Even if you aren't even remotely interested, you should read it. It has a dry wit you rarely see developers use in their information-dump patch updates.
