17 Best Steampunk Games to Play on Xbox One

#15 Deep Rock Galactic

Admittedly, this game is steampunk adjacent, but it’s still fun. Deep Rock Galactic invites you and up to three of your friends to head into the mines of an alien planet. Players in this cooperative first-person shooter game are space dwarves tasked with different missions in the caves. The missions are usually obtaining objects, such as specific minerals or alien eggs. Missions can also be to take out a specific target too. Meanwhile, there are bug-like aliens to fight off while you carry out the job. Luckily you will have backup! There are four classes to choose from: The Engineer, The Scout, The Gunner, and The Driller. Each class will have different tools and strengths, so your party can strategize the best combination for your group. Deep Rock Galactic is colorful and fun, and who doesn’t want to be a dwarf in space?

#13 Dead Cells

Dead Cells has a delightfully weird premise. You play a sentient but mute blob called the Prisoner. Waking up in the dungeon with no memory of where you are or why, you immediately possess and reanimate a corpse to fight your way out. This 2D “roguevania” game will have you hopping up onto ledges and scurrying down chains to kill enemies and collect a currency called Cells. Use a sword, bow, shield, and more to mow down mutated monsters that inhabit the island castle you are trapped on. Your reasoning is to kill the king and escape, so that is exactly what you will try to do. While you, the blob, may be immortal, your corpse is not. Which is a trippy thought. Every time your corpse is destroyed, you slither back down to the dungeons to get a new one. It’s definitely a fun game if you like clearing levels and learning by dying repeatedly.

#11 The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is an action RPG full of monsters, magic, and mad scientists. Play the son of legendary vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing on a mission to save Borgova from a variety of monsters, many of which are enhanced by weird anachronistic science. Accompanied by the lovely ghost, Katarina, you can tailor both of your skills to become the ultimate monster hunting duo. Together, you will fight hordes of monsters in various settings that feel like they came from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Borgova is a 19th Century Gothic city, complete with cobblestone streets and plumes of smoke and steam from chimneys. However, you will also venture to the forested villages on the outskirts of the town as well as into the Frankenstein-esque labs that create the creatures plaguing the city. If you’re interested in fighting off hordes of monsters while using over-the-top sci-fi weapons and a ghost sidekick, then you might want to give this one a try.

#10 Vampyr

Waking up in a mass grave in early 20th Century Britain, Jonathan E. Reid discovers that he is now a vampire. Now he has a choice: lay low and continue to be a practicing doctor or lean into the blood lust and see how powerful he can become. In this action RPG, you get to direct how the story ends based on choices to help or harm the citizens of London. It is possible to go through the entire game without killing a single citizen, but in doing so, you don’t reach your full potential and may have a hard time battling the other vampires in the game. But if you’re too vicious and obvious, your cover as a doctor will be blown, and the citizens may turn on you too.

Vampyr is an interesting game of action and ethics. Vampire lore and steampunk often overlap because of similar aesthetics in the clothing and setting. The city in this game is haunting at night. Lamplit streets, brick buildings, and long coats give you that historical vibe while your occult powers and battles bring with it that mysterious out-of-time feeling that we like from our steampunk games.

#9 Vaporum

For the dungeon dwelling RPG fans out there, Vaporum is a single-player, grid-based RPG where you have to figure out the where, what, and who. Where are you? What are you doing there? And who even are you? We know that you’re trapped in a steampunk tower on a deserted island, but the rest of the details remain to be discovered. From a first-person perspective, explore the tower while fighting enemies and solving puzzles. You will engage in real-time combat with automatons and try to navigate the maze-like tower. There are objectives for each level to be completed. Also, instead of upgrading your character skills, you upgrade your armor as you collect loot while you explore. With fully voiced narrative passages, cool graphics, and plenty of secret passages around the tower to find, this is a pleasant steampunk game for RPG fans.

#8 SteamWorld Dig Series

The SteamWorld Dig series are platform mining games with a mix of steampunk and Western themes. In SteamWorld Dig, you play a small steambot named Rusty, who uses his pickax to mine for loot. Beginning on the surface, once you enter the randomly generated mine, you create your own routes to mine all of the ore, gems, and gold that you can. The tricky part is making sure that you can climb back out when you’re done, so there is a little bit of strategy to the digging. In SteamWorld Dig 2, there is an overarching plot. Rusty is missing, and his friend Dorothy has come to rescue him. Caught up in the town of El Machino’s drama, Dorothy must figure out how to keep the citizens of the town from becoming completely addicted to a substance called moon juice while also looking for Rusty. Dorothy has access to more weapons and fighting enemies as she digs through the mines is a big part of the game. For fans of platform gaming, any or all of the games in the SteamWorld Dig series are plenty of fun.

#7 Deponia

For all of you point-and-click story fans, Deponia is very funny. The game takes place on the planet by the same name. When its richer citizens created a floating city called Elysium, the rest of the planet became a giant garbage dump. One of the unlucky humans on the planet’s surface, Rufus, is cunning and driven to find a way into Elysium, despite being driven to do little else in life. His ex-girlfriend will tell you all about it in a series of passive aggressive notes left behind for him to find. When a young woman falls from the floating city, Rufus finally has a chance to escape. But how can he help himself without hurting her? Love can be so inconvenient.

The dialogue is very funny, and fans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy-style humor will enjoy this. The gameplay revolves around solving a variety of puzzles in order to advance the plot. For example, early on, Rufus uses a to-do list in order to pack for his grand escape. Grabbing his toothbrush shouldn’t be too hard, except that it comes to life and runs away. You have to click around the apartment gathering items in order to coax the toothbrush out of the dark corner it is hiding in. If that sounds like your kind of game, check out Deponia!

#6 Machinarium

If you’re a point-and-click fan looking for an adventure game, look no further. Machinarium is an indie adventure game that centers on a little robot hero who is trying to save his girlfriend from a gang that runs the city. Starting in the scrapyard, you will have to solve a series of logic puzzles and win mini quests to get back into the city. All of the other citizens of the city, Machinarium, are also robots, but don’t worry, they aren’t too hard to understand. All dialogue in this game is done through comic bubbles holding little animations.

The story is cute, and the art is the real selling point of the game. We see some classic steampunk details as an entire civilization of advanced robots live in a rundown city made of gears, pipes, and pulleys. With its simple and visual storytelling, beautiful original music, and light system requirements, Machinarium is a game that can be enjoyed by everyone.

#5 Call of Cthulhu

For players interested in something more on the macabre side of steampunk, Call of Cthulu is calling you. Play a private investigator named Edward Pierce, who is hired to discover what happened to Sarah Hawkins, a famous painter with a dark portfolio of work. Rumor has it that she went mad and killed her entire family in a fire. As the investigator battling your post-war trauma, you dive into a case that quickly shakes your hold on reality. Madness may be more difficult to distinguish from reality than you hoped.

Based on the lore of famous horror novelist, H. P. Lovecraft, Call of Cthulu is dark, trippy, and full of horrific murder and gore. The first-person perspective helps with the occasional jump scare and lends itself nicely to the other psychological horror aspects of doubting what you see and hear. You are often in a literal fog as you move through an underground series of chambers and tunnels full of whale and shark intestines. We put it on this particular list because of its 19th Century setting and clothing style. Also, because it blends just enough science fiction with the occult.

#4 Dishonored Series

The Dishonored series are action-adventure games that lean heavily on the steampunk aesthetic. In a world called the Empire of Isles, where technology and magic co-exist, you play an assassin with supernatural powers. From a first-person perspective, explore each level like it is an open world. You will have an objective for each level, such as killing a target or completing a task, but how you go about it is up to you. You don’t even have to kill anyone if you don’t want to, though each kill adds to your chaos levels that determine the ending of the game. There are currently three games to choose from: Dishonored, Dishonored 2, and Dishonored: Death of the Outsider. If you’re looking for an immersive steampunk experience, give this franchise a try.

#3 Frostpunk

Frostpunk is a city-building survival game that forces you to make some brutal decisions. In an alternate history where the 1883 Krakatoa eruption leads to a worldwide volcanic winter, you play the captain of one of the last cities on Earth. As the world continues to cool, you and your followers settle around a giant generator in a crevasse. But cities are intricate systems and sometimes require a heavy hand to maintain. You decide how to keep everyone warm, fed, and relatively happy, and sometimes that means turning refugees away or weeding out rebellions.

The game is beautifully made with some classic steampunk aesthetics. Giant gears and coal keep the steam-powered generators going as steam rises in the icy hellscape surrounding the city. Four-legged robots called Automatons can be built to staff some of your buildings too, adding another anachronistic tech to the 1886 setting. There are also multiple storylines to play in the game with varying goals and available resources, so players have a range of adventures to enjoy in this one game.

#2 Sunless Sea

Another Lovecraftian horror meets steampunk adventure game, Sunless Sea will have you anxiously exploring in the dark from a bird’s eye view perspective. You captain a Victorian steamship on an underground sea. With no light to guide you beyond your ship’s searchlight, you explore the dark waters in search of treasure. More often than not, you will encounter enormous sea creatures or strange machines that will drive you and your crew into madness and death. Your interactions are narrated by short but powerful sentences, and you will discover oddities such as giant crabs and sentient icebergs. Choose your crew based on a cast of interesting characters to have a unique experience each time.

#1 BioShock Infinite

BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter adventure game in a very cool setting. You play Booker, who is rocketed up to a city-state in the clouds called Columbia. Though the city is picturesque as it floats in the clouds using wind turbines and blimps, etc, the government is anything but. A religious fanatic has assumed total control over the city, and his rule is plagued with racial inequality. The main point of conflict in the game is the rise of the marginalized citizens of Columbia in an attempt to free themselves from tyranny. On top of all of that, there are Tears in the fabric of spacetime throughout the city. The result is anachronistic music and weaponry to navigate as you attempt to complete level objectives. BioShock Infinite was extremely well-received by fans, and it honestly is the perfect steampunk game for anyone who enjoys story-driven first-person shooter games.