Steam Works Board Game First Impressions

In Steam works, you build contraptions and use them to your advantage.

You also use your opponents to your advantage too!

Inventors and tinkerers abound in the Victorian era, harnessing the power of clockwork, steam, and electricks to build machines capable of anything to give glory to Queen Victoria!

In the steampunk worker placement game Steam Works, you’ll put your mechanics to work collecting components and power sources, then you’ll literally build devices by assembling those sources and components. What’s more those devices, in turn, become action spaces for other players to use!

Steam Works Summary

So I don’t think I’ve played anything like this. Obviously, I’ve played worker placement games. I’ve played worker placements games where you can piggyback off your opponent’s work.

The matching of tiles reminds me of Galaxy Trucker as I mentioned in my video. Obviously, you aren’t doing it in real-time but the connectors are similar.

The tile laying is interesting. I’m not sure any games I’ve played have you build multiple sets of tiles. Games like Isle of Skye do the tile thing but just the one.

The increasing costs of placing workers are interesting. It means you need to make sure you have the cash to play a round. Sometimes you need to place your first worker in a space to raise the funds to play the next 2!

The characters are cool. they have different costs and starting tiles. Also, one of the players had a character that spent Electrical Power Source tiles instead of money. So to place workers they had to spend tiles.

That’s VERY different from the rest of us. That’s cool.

It’s just a shame the game is so restrictive and a bit too tense. When there is just ONE tile that allows you to do the one thing you need to do, and you don’t get it. It’s frustrating. Too frustrating.

Jesta ThaRogue