Please listen to this music while reading the post, it adds to the feeling : http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/232557 Appearance: Steam gnomes are odd little creatures about half the size of the player, they have a metallic (but strangely flexible) coat which covers most of there body. Only there hands, feet and parts of there face are exposed. There head consist of a big cone-like chimney that emits puffs of smoke every now and then. It is yet unknown what is going on under the metal coat. They do not appear to be robots but neither do they resemble a fully biological life form. There smoke color, body color, the head, the face, and the body features can differ trough generation. Origin: There origin is a big mystery. There is completely no sign of a possible home-planet as they are not capable of interplanetary travels, yet they appear on different planets across the galaxy. Strangely they are just there... Behavior: A single steam gnome, no matter what kind of circumstances, will always start building. As times progresses buildings will become bigger and more gnomes will start to appear, which means the city will grow exponentially. The buildings have the same color as the gnomes themselves and an industrial look with smoke emitting chimney's. The smoke causes the air to turn gray/brown and all nearby plants to wither. After a certain size is reached the gnomes will start digging in search for metal. More metal means faster growth of the city which adds some random factors in the process. They will not stop for anything to get there city as big as possible in the shortest amount of time, consuming every kind of biome or structure in the process and eventually turning the whole planet in one big industrial mess with steam gnomes hysterically running around everywhere. Because of the rush of the building the city will often suffer from strange structural glitches and even the death of there own gnomes. Depending on the different encounters the have they will build different features in there city, for instance: they will build an army and weapons if they are attacked, they will build boats and underwater structures if they encounter water, they will build woodcutting factories and circular saws if they encounter trees, etc. Interaction with the player: Steam gnomes are in small groups harmless. They will mostly flee on sight. Some variation might feel a bit brave and attack the player with some body-slams that lead into a bit of knock-back. There buildings are also pretty easy to knock down which makes it not much of a work to destroy a city in it's early stages to prevent the planet from turning into an industrial wasteland. Note that to prevent a city from growing, every single gnome must be taken care of as a single gnome can start a new city on it's own. However, sometimes the player wants to let a city grow. Steam gnomes develop different weapons, tools, vehicles, factories, etc. which can be of great use. As there is no way of having an alliance with the gnomes (they see themselves as "the" superior species) the only way of obtaining these is having a steam gnome farm. This must be done with extreme caution. A small city is easy to maintain, but as they get bigger, they will develop stronger resistance until a point where it becomes to much for the player to handle... The size of the city can be controlled by destroying some buildings from time to time and removing or placing metal in the ground yourself.
Wow, so much details, so awesome! I like the idea behind it alot, the drawings make up for the wall of interesting text. Would be awesome to walk into a Steam City, i would observe them for hours! Great art, great info, great idea! You got one of my votes!
Haha nice. I dunno if these are really "monsters" as such, but are definitely something that needs to be in the game. They got a pretty cool look, and as far as game play goes they have a lot to offer
