Nintendo Announces Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. For Nintendo 3DS [Update]. June 11, 2014 . 6:11pm
Nintendo have announced a brand new game for the Nintendo 3DS—Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. It’s a turn-based strategy game with elements from action games. Specifically, the action elements draw from third-person shooters.
S.T.EA.M. takes place in a London that’s entirely steam-powered. In this world, wireless technology such as radios are a new invention. The game’s main character is named Captain Fleming and players command the Unit S.T.E.A.M., an elite fighting force created by Abraham Lincoln.
S.T.E.A.M. is being developed by Intelligent Systems, the developer of Fire Emblem and Advance Wars. Paul Patraschu is the creative director. Takako Sakai is the art director.
The game is produced by Hitoshi Yamagami. He’s the Nintendo producer on games like Xenoblade, Fire Emblem and Style Savvy. During the presentation, Yamagami said that people have a kind of timidity about turn-based strategy. He’s been thinking about why it is that people have this aversion to these games.
Patraschu said he’s been with Intelligent Systems for 8 years. He joined the company because of their strategy games, and he shares Yamagami’s worries as to why it is that strategy games don’t have a major following. Perhaps, he suggested, there’s too much abstraction between the player and the game world in strategy games.
Perhaps the disconnection between the player and the world feels intimidating, Patraschu said. His solution to this was taking the point of view of the player and putting it down into the battlefield at the level of the units you command. One concern Yamagami had regarding this was how players would understand the condition of the battlefield without having some sort of overhead view of it. The solution—to allow the player to explore during their turn, eliminating the need for a map.
Takako Sakai then decided the game would be steampunk-themed.
Nintendo said the “move, attack, select new unit” format doesn’t work for this kind of game. They wanted to bring non-linear problem-solving to the turn-based format. Your turns in S.T.E.A.M. are essentially limited by how much steam you have on a little bar on the bottom of the screen. Until you’ve performed some kind of action like an attack, even if you move, your steam won’t be completely depleted.
The fifth mission in S.T.E.A.M. is titled “Liberating Boston”. The mission started out with 9 units on the Nintendo 3DS’ bottom screen. One of them looked like it has a pumpkin for a head. Another looked like a… tiger… thing. Nintendo said that each character has unique characteristics and powers. We wanted to make it easy to tell what kinds of powers characters have just by looking at them.
Even if you aren’t very good at Math, you can still enjoy this game a lot, the game’s developers said. This also means that you won’t be grinding for experience to boost stats—instead, you’re focused on expanding the team and making the team itself stronger. You’ll get new characters as you go through the game, and new weapons that allow for different ways of attacking. There’s no way to grind your way into an all-powerful character, and there’s no all-powerful weapon waiting at the end. Your victory depends on how well you can use the powers of your team together to defeat each map.
Creative director Patraschu said that S.T.E.A.M. employs an element that has been in a lot of strategy games of late, he said—an “overwatch attack,” where instead of attacking on your own turn, it’s an attack you make on the enemy’s turn.
In order to balance the game, the overwatch attack has been made more meaningful, more powerful. You have the ability to stun the enemy. It depends on the weapon, but because enemies are quite durable, you might take a risk with an overwatch attack. There’s a tracking period before these attacks connect—you might have a chance to run away from an attack, for example.
Nintendo wanted S.T.EA.M.’s characters to be iconic. The artists on the development team at Intelligent Systems drew inspiration from Silver Age American comic books. Sakai said that what he really loves about American comics is the positive nature of the art—the liveliness, the vivid colour schemes. He cited Jack Kirby as one of his favourite artists.
Intelligent Systems paid close attention to colour and shading in the game. They also used pixel art for the terrain, so that no matter what distance you look at the textures from, they maintain the same visual style all the time. The goal is to make it so every map is some place the player feels they’ve never seen before.
Another influence, surprisingly, was H.P. Lovecraft. The aliens that are attacking the earth are all original creations in S.T.E.A.M., but Intelligent Systems said you can see the heavy influence of H.P. lovecraft in their work on the game.
Intelligent Systems have said that there will be no permadeath in S.T.E.A.M. You’ll be able to use Medals you collect from defeating enemies to restore health and steam at checkpoints. There will be one difficulty throughout the whole game.
S.T.E.A.M. stands for “Strike Team Eliminating the Alien Menace”.
Why Does S.T.E.A.M. For Nintendo 3DS Take Place In London? June 11, 2014 . 6:58pm 
First Screenshots Of Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. June 11, 2014 . 7:31pm
Nintendo have announced a brand new turn-based strategy game that contains third-person shooter elements. Titled Code Name: S.T.E.A.M., the game is in development for the Nintendo 3DS. Details can be found here, and screenshots below.
Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. Rated T By ESRB. June 30, 2014 . 3:32pm source:Siliconera
Codename: STEAM Arrives On Nintendo 3DS Spring 2015 [Update]. November 5, 2014 . 2:08pm
Tap their respective Amiibo to have them join your team.
Code Name S.T.E.A.M. will be compatible with select Amiibo, Nintendo announced during its Nintendo Direct broadcast this morning.
By tapping an existing Fire Emblem Amiibo character such as Marth or Ike, or an upcoming Amiibo like Robin or Lucina, on the touch screen of the New 3DS, players can enlist their help in battle. They won’t have any role in the story, but they can join your team nonetheless.
In the tradition of Fire Emblem, Amiibo characters that fall in battle cannot be revived at checkpoints during a fight. You’ll have to wait until the match is over, and tap the Amiibo on the touch screen again to have that hero join your team again. The characters wield weaponry and abilities pulled straight from their core series.
Code Name S.T.E.A.M. is due out for 3DS on March 13.
Watch a new trailer below.
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Nintendo Will Release More Marth Amiibos In North America. January 14, 2015 . 7:40am source:Siliconera
Let’s Talk About The New Codename S.T.E.A.M. Demo. February 1, 2015 . 5:00pm source: Siliconera3
Nintendo recently released a demo for Codename S.T.E.A.M. via the eShop, and we’re here to talk about how it plays. Let’s start with the basics. The common consensus when Codename S.T.E.A.M. was announced was that it was Nintendo’s take on Valkyria Chronicles. That said, while there are a number of similarities, the comparison between the two games isn’t as straightforward as you might think.
Codename S.T.E.A.M. has characters moving freely around a 3D environment. Instead of being limited to a certain range of movement, though, characters instead operate on “Steam” energy. Doing anything in the game requires Steam. Moving requires Steam, firing your weapons requires Steam, and so on. The interesting part is, after you’ve moved, if you don’t like what you just did, you can retrace your steps back to your original spot and this will bring back all the Steam energy you used up. You can then move to a different spot to see if that suits you better. If not, you can retrace your steps again, and try once more.
Codename S.T.E.A.M. is a game that’s all about managing where you are in relation to your enemy, and it encourages the player to try different things out before locking in their turn. You’re in no way committed to your move until your turn ends (with an “End Turn” button that you tap) or something that potentially affects someone’s HP happens. There’s a lot of room for experimenting with what your next move should be until you feel comfortable enough to commit to it.
This is important because there’s a large amount of money scattered around each map, along with health packs and other items, and you can collect them without using up any Steam if you’re smart. For example; let’s say there’s some money around the corner from you. You could run around the corner (using up Steam to do so), pick the cash up, and then backtrack to your original spot (thus regaining all the Steam you used). Now, that may sound like it would make the game too easy, but it doesn’t. Steam has many uses and every turn, you’ll use yours up much faster than you would have thought. Thus, managing how you use your Steam is everything.
Here’s another example of an interesting way the game makes you keep an eye on your Steam: Codename S.T.E.A.M. has a feature called “Overwatch”. If you have extra Steam left over after your turn, if an enemy unit walks within range of you, your character will automatically perform a pre-emptive attack using their remaining Steam. Overwatch is interesting because it means you could potentially kill an enemy unit before it even has the chance to attack you. Again, it’s up to you whether you want to use all your Steam up on your turn or save a little in case an enemy gets too close.
Naturally, Steam refills between turns. You get 8 units of Steam per turn for every unit in your party, and 2-4 units get spent per attack depending on the weapon. Each “space” you move on the stage costs one unit, and, if the weapon supports Overwatch, you can only use Overwatch if you save enough steam for an attack or more. In fact, if you have enough Steam, you could even perform two Overwatch attacks. You can also refill Steam through Steam pick-ups, by spending in-game money on single use save points, or by reaching tutorial messages scattered around the map.
The tutorial messages feature in particular is a little quirky. Since tutorial hints are scattered throughout the map, you may not even see one until the info is already useless. (Shoot at the chandelier to drop it on your enemies! …what do you mean you already killed them all?!)
All in all, the Codename S.T.E.A.M. demo is rather generous. It gives you access to the prologue (3 maps), chapter 1 (3 maps) and the first map of chapter 2. You only have one character for the prologue, two for chapter 1, and four for chapter 2, although you can replay chapters 1 and 2 when done. Note that I say you can replay the chapters, not the maps. You get to bring in anyone you want, but you can’t go straight to, say, the second map of chapter 1. You can freely retry a map from the beginning if you’re in the middle of it, though.
I only have two real thoughts on these maps that I haven’t already mentioned. The first is that chapter 1 was legitimately difficult at times due to having two characters and no healing outside of save points and health packs—although I may have found it harder because of how I didn’t know the save points were save points for a while. When you get your third and fourth characters, you also get access to sub-weapons, which gives the protagonist the ability to heal, as well as a character whose main weapon is meant to simply heal.
The second is how the game handles the enemy aliens’ turns. The game plays each alien unit’s turn one at a time, even if the player cannot see what they’re doing because they’re out of sight. Because of this, it might seem like the game has “stopped” because entire seconds go by where the aliens’ turn is playing out, and you can’t see what’s going on. There’s also no skip button and no, the R button does not fast-forward a-la Fire Emblem. Depending on the map and how you approach it, this can add up to spending quite a while waiting for aliens you can’t see to complete their turn. The only thing telling you that the game is even doing anything is a bar under the notification that it’s the aliens’ turn, which fills up as each one moves. (So keep an eye on that to assure yourself that the game hasn’t simply stopped.)
Codename S.T.E.A.M.’s demo left a fairly good impression on me, and I look forward to seeing how the full game plays.
Food for Thought:
1. Funny story about the save points… the tutorials don’t even mention them, so when I saw a green, glowing structure, I thought, “obviously alien-related” and shot at it. Good thing they’re immune to the anti-terrain weapon. I later found out they were save points by accident.
2. The final map in the demo has some enemies that lob grenades at you. Sadly, even when you’re standing right next to them and pointing at them, Overwatch never seems to trigger in response.
3. It seems there are four methods available to control the camera and aim. I wouldn’t recommend the face buttons since you can accidentally skip dialogue this way, but the touch screen works fine. The other two methods are the Circle Pad Pro and the C-stick, which I couldn’t try, since I have access to neither. Honestly, my only issue with this is that the turning your camera and aiming your weapon are considered the same thing by the game.
4. For those of you that hate enemy units spawning behind you without warning in Fire Emblem—this game does that, too. Map 2 of chapter 1 spawned some aliens at the starting position after a few turns.
5. I swear I got more critical hits from Overwatch than attacking enemies on my turn. I don’t know if that’s actually a thing or just confirmation bias, though.
6. This may feel pedantic, but bear with me. The aliens have a 4-or-so-second animation of them looking left and right before ending their turn if they haven’t noticed you yet. The game plays a similar, but shorter animation even if they have, before they start moving.
Read more stories about Code Name: STEAM & Nintendo 3DS on Siliconera.
source: GematsuHappy Presidents' Day from Nintendo.
Nintendo and Intelligent Systems have released a new trailer for Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. in celebration of Presidents’ Day.
The trailer is focused on Abraham Lincoln, who in the game creates a unique army of special-forces soldiers to protect the world from an alien invasion. The game itself is set in steampunk London.
The strategy game is due out for 3DS on March 13.
Watch the trailer below.
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