It's not really competition for Clockwork Empires as it might superficially seem, because it's more of a throwback to the old Impressions city builders like Caesar and Pharaoh (in which I sunk far too many hours). Anyway, it just popped up on Steam as a full launch--not early access. I haven't gotten it yet because of some reports of major bugs, but it looks like the devs may be on top of things. http://lethispop.com/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/359230/
Man, it's remarkable how this game is so much like the first concepts I drew for CE which were heavily inspired by Impressions: Down to the pipes, which I suppose are an obvious way to interpret the aqueduct mechanics into steampunk. And the walkers, and stockpiles, and everything. Of course, we went somewhere rather different with CE.
Unforked, I bought Lethis, logged 64 hours of playtime (compared to my 133 hours of CWE so far). It is indeed a somewhat simpler overall concept than CWE, which is both Lethis's strength and weakness compared to CWE. Pros: Lots of cheap decorations, a visual love letter for Steampunk France (at some points, your people refuse to upgrade their housing if their surroundings are not pretty enough) Multiple chapters, each with different goals as well as a sandbox mode Trade with neighboring cities to make up for missing resources and for profit (using airships of course ) Nostalgia factor of the old DOS city builders Can control game speed Cons: no warfare (may be a Pro if you don't want combat. Your political opponents occasionally sabotage your buildings on some chapters.) game occasionally crashes for me No Mac or Linux port Both good and bad: Simplified class system: you have a worker class and a noble class. Game is somewhat linear (i.e. transport of goods food is only via roads). While this streamlines pathing, those who want their minions to be more independent thinkers will be put off by this. Absinthe-love the idea of how it's made, a bit squeamish of what gave its life to make it. Housing building level up (like the old DOS city builders) depending on certain conditions, but this also means that it could spiral downwards to where your city is almost a ghost town. Very difficult to recover at that point. English is definitely not the developer's main language; however, this adds a pleasantly foreign quality to the game for me. Cheat codes available
