Steam Marines is a squad-based Roguelike being developed by Worthless Bums. It is currently in Open Alpha (v0.7.0a) and features:
- 2D retro-styled art and turn based action.
- Procedurally Generated Levels.
- A squad of combatants fighting for their lives in monster filled levels.
- Use your squad to cover defensive positions or funnel enemies into chokepoints to blow them up.

Steampunk spaceship under attack by aliens, you say? The aim of the game is to progress through the various decks of your besieged steampunk spaceship in order to repel the alien invaders and get out of dodge. It features permadeath and will have a recruitment system. Build your squad members into deadly, long-range marksmen, or up-close-and-personal death machines. But no one is invincible, and if someone dies you'll have to replace him/her with a raw recruit. If the entire squad dies it's game over.

The game is also listed on Steam Greenlight! Please go and vote/favorite it if you enjoy the alpha!

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Steam Marines gets new window dressings. Steam Marines New Main Menu Steam Marines Medical Deck
Blog RSS Feed Report abuse Latest News: Steam Marines v0.7.6a has arrived with a Score Screen and more!

1 comment by Worthless_Bums on May 21st, 2013

Hello, everyone!

If you enjoy Steam Marines please do head over to Steam Greenlight and vote for it!

This build brings quite a few changes. As usual the full changelog follows at the bottom of the post but here are the highlights:

High Scores!

Steam Marines Score Screen

A scoring system and a high score screen - accessible from the main menu and it pops up after squad death. Right now the scoring system is opaque but I'll be making it transparent, and adding more miscellaneous stat tracking, in the future.

Damage, Armor, and Nastiness!

Enemy group AI

The last few builds brought better group intelligence and flanking AI to the forefront of the middle game. In this build enemy health and damage was reduced across the board, but now all enemy attacks reduce target armor. The marine classes also now have base armor factored into the randomized armor rating, meaning while a Grenadier might have high armor rating to start with, getting beat on will really start reducing his ability to survive.

The Hulk Strikes Back!

Hulk Attacks!

Is this guy blocking your way to the Engineering Deck? Are you angry I nerfed grenade damage? Fear not, with the aforementioned AI group mechanics and armor stat changes, it's more a fight of attrition rather than a straight up slugging match.

For fun and profit, I also added new items (scopes to increase/decrease weapon range and armor kits to increase armor rating), a new weapon damage type (acid that burns through target armor), and a rare one-use weapon, the Lasershot. With 30 base, unmitigated damage and 4 range, it can lance through multiple enemies and even walls. Use with caution - friendly fire isn't!

Another Let's Play? (Plus an untimely crash?!)
From Gaming Faster Than Light:

Have fun and happy robot hunting!

The full changelog fo v0.7.6a follows:

-------------------------------------------------
New Features
-------------------------------------------------

  • Added high score screen.
  • (Physical) armor is always reduced by 1 from a direct enemy attack.
  • Weapon stats no longer have a chance to be reduced on enemy attack.
  • Marine class armor has a higher range of randomized armor rating stat.
  • Base class armor rating rebalanced; Leader has 4, Scout has 2, Grenadier has 6, and Support has 3.
  • Base melee and range damage for all enemy units reduced across the board.
  • Tick health increased slightly.
  • Thopter health decreased slightly.
  • Rebalanced Buckets. Damage and armor values reduced.
  • Treasure chests can now contain items other than armor and weapons. Chest spawn chance slightly increased depending on deck level.
  • Special weapons now appear earlier in the game and with more frequency than normal weapons. To compensate randomized armor has a higher chance of being in chests instead of weapons.
  • Weapons can now come with an "Acid" prefix which makes them reduce targets' armor ratings.
  • Added Longsights and Shortsights, single use items that can permanently modify weapon range up and down, respectively.
  • Added Armor Kits that permanently increase equipped armor by 1.
  • Implemented chance for enemy AI to halt pursuit depending on line-of-sight, fog-of-war, distance between player and enemy units, and enemy unit communication.
  • Added special one use item, the Lasershot. Deals an unmitigated 30 damage to all units and wall tiles and closed doors within 4 tiles ahead.

-------------------------------------------------
Bug Fixes
-------------------------------------------------

  • Fixed closed doors sometimes being flagged as walls that didn't block line-of-sight.
  • Fixed enemy unit door interactions not firing properly when other units were adjacent to the door.
  • Fixed errant player input on end level screen.
  • Fixed UI not always returning after clearing all enemies and ending the turn.
  • Fixed some performance issues because fog of war was updating when it wasn't necessary.

-------------------------------------------------
Notes
-------------------------------------------------

  • Reintroduced 1024x768 resolution support.
  • Made fonts/font sizes more consistent and readable for smaller resolutions.
  • Overhauled squad creation screen.
  • Changed main menu save state preview to show character rank instead of internal level.
  • Directly selecting a squad member will no longer shortcut out if that character is already selected. It will always manually switch to that target squad member.
  • Fog of war fading has been turned off by default. I suspect this is the cause of the recent crash complaints.
  • License file changed.
Media RSS Feed Latest Video
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Steam Marines v0.7.6a (Mac)

Steam Marines v0.7.6a (Mac)

May 21, 2013 Demo 0 comments

This is the alpha build of Steam Marines v0.7.6a for Mac OS X.

Steam Marines v0.7.6a (Win)

Steam Marines v0.7.6a (Win)

May 21, 2013 Demo 3 comments

This is the alpha build of Steam Marines v0.7.6a for Windows.

Steam Marines v0.7.5a (Mac)

Steam Marines v0.7.5a (Mac)

May 12, 2013 Demo 0 comments

This is the Steam Marines alpha build v0.7.5a for Mac OS X.

Steam Marines v0.7.5a (Win)

Steam Marines v0.7.5a (Win)

May 12, 2013 Demo 0 comments

This is the Steam Marines alpha build v0.7.5a for Windows.

Steam Marines v0.7.4.5a (Mac)

Steam Marines v0.7.4.5a (Mac)

May 4, 2013 Demo 0 comments

This is the Steam Marines alpha build v0.7.4.5a for Mac OS X.

Steam Marines v0.7.4.5a (Win)

Steam Marines v0.7.4.5a (Win)

May 4, 2013 Demo 1 comment

This is the Steam Marines alpha build v0.7.4.5a for Windows.

Post comment Comments  (0 - 10 of 55)
ofk
ofk May 21 2013, 6:04am says:

Hello there!

I have 3 issues with your wonderful game:

1- crashing: as of v0.7.6a the crashing became more frequent, which is annoying.

2- lack of props: the environment is good looking but lacking some aspects: mauled bodies, bullet holes,blood? you know, signs that say that the ship was overrun ?

3- equipment art: every thing looks like the other, weapon A looks like weapon B.

other than those trivial things, this game is probably one of my fav. at the moment and the best part is that its free!. So thank you for your great work.

+2 votes     reply to comment
Worthless_Bums
Worthless_Bums May 22 2013, 3:13am replied:

Hey, ofk, thanks for the feedback! I'm aware of the crashing reports and am working on it. There's a forum thread here: Worthlessbums.com and a boring video of me auto-stress testing here: Youtube.com

The art has stalled a bit since my artist dropped from the project a few weeks back. I'm working that angle as well - I agree the environment is sparse atm.

+2 votes     reply to comment
ofk
ofk May 22 2013, 6:16am replied:

Well i can tell you when and where the crash happens for me:

command deck 2 , i clear a small room filled with brutes and small looking robots with great amount of health. I then continue exploring and BAM! crash, every time. hope that helped.

And so sorry about hearing that your artist left, i know how is it like to have someone leave you in the middle of a project. :\

I would also to make a suggestion,since its a rouge like with pre-created levels, can another type of room be added? i would very much like to have shoot outs in "large" halls instead of the repetitive small rooms(knowing that its strategically better to fight in small rooms rather in large rooms).

And again thank you for your work.


+2 votes     reply to comment
Worthless_Bums
Worthless_Bums May 24 2013, 12:52am replied:

I was working on the level generation and tilesets when I dropped everything to fix the crashes. Larger rooms are, as you say, tactically inferior from a gameplay perspective, but I have plans for prefab areas. I had been playing with geomorphs, too! :)

+1 vote     reply to comment
hyd53Xniner
hyd53Xniner Apr 28 2013, 7:30pm says:

v0.7.1a ran way too hot for my laptop, even when just in the menu or setup screen, and using the lowest resolution.

v0.7.4a runs cool now, even on higher resolutions. Great improvement!
Game does seem to crash fairly often.
Typically the crashes don't display an error message, although one time there was a Torque memory error -- it couldn't allocate memory (perhaps a memory leak?).

Minor bug with the Napalm ability of the Grenadier. It used up the 2 AP correctly, but didn't update the display of his remaining AP (the blue number).

Sometimes the message panel in the lower-left corner seems to be clipped by the bottom border of the window.

All in all, the game holds promise. Will check back later.

+3 votes     reply to comment
Worthless_Bums
Worthless_Bums Apr 28 2013, 11:25pm replied:

Good to hear things are running better on your end now ^_^

I've been getting more crash reports for the new build - still tracking down the reason. Will look into the other issues, thanks for taking the time to give me some feedback! :)

+2 votes     reply to comment
SaschaWillems
SaschaWillems Apr 27 2013, 8:23am says:

I really like what you're doing here. Not only is it turn-based (a genre that has sadly lost most of it's audience) but also has a this nice hand-made look.

It actually reminds me of one of the first games a friend and I developed almost 15 years ago which was based on the space crusade board game. We drew all of the graphics pixel-by-pixel using MS paint ^^

+3 votes     reply to comment
V3000TT
V3000TT Apr 20 2013, 1:05am says:

Just tried the demo and I have a stupid question: Why my marine suddenly get killed while trying to move to certain tile? Is there a landmine or such?

+3 votes     reply to comment
Worthless_Bums
Worthless_Bums Apr 24 2013, 3:04pm replied:

There are traps on the floors symbolized by red skulls. I've been getting reports than sometimes the traps are invisible. I'm looking into the issue.

+2 votes     reply to comment
Uliseh
Uliseh Apr 17 2013, 11:25am says:

Looks pretty cool ! :) tracking ! ;)

+2 votes     reply to comment
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Steam Marines
Platforms
Windows, Mac
Developer & Publisher
Worthless Bums
Engine
Torque 2D
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Official Page
SteamMarines.com
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Roguelike
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Sci-Fi
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Single Player
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