STEEL CIRCUS Closed Alpha Impressions on Steam

Steel Circus by developer Iron Mountain Interactive and published by Oasis Games, is a 3 v 3 sci-fi sports game where you score by getting the ball into the opposing team’s goal. The winner is the first team to 10 points or whichever team has more points when the 5 minute timer runs out.

In the game, you can pick up the ball by touching it if it is laying on the ground. If a player on the opposing team has the ball, you can try to tackle them or use a special ability to stall them or make them drop the ball.

When you begin a new match, you can select a character from the ones you have available. You start with 3, but you can earn enough points to buy the others by playing the game. While 2 people on the same team can’t pick the same character, the character selection on one team does not impact the other (meaning you could end up fighting a team of the same characters as your team). In character selection, players are given an order in which they can choose their character, although it is possible to vote for a character you would like to use during someone else’s turn. However, whether or not the vote is taken into consideration is up to the discretion of the player whose turn it is to pick. While all characters have the same speed and tackle efficiency, they have differing amounts of health and different special abilities. Special abilities have a variety of effects, from slowing or stalling other players to outright damaging them.

Every character has a health meter. While getting tackled does nothing to this meter, some special abilities can deplete the health meter. If the meter hits 0, you will be out of the game for 5 seconds before being placed back in to the match. Each time a player on a team gets knocked out, the respawn timer for that team increases, to a maximum of 20 seconds. As such, knocking out enemy players can be a useful strategy for clearing the field of opposition long enough to score a goal. It should be noted, however, that when a team scores a goal, all players are instantly revived, regardless of how much time they have left to wait.

Steel Circus also has a shop for what I assume are microtransactions, but thankfully, all of these were only cosmetic. Overall, I had fun playing this early build of the game.

Take a Look at the Steel Circus Trailer:

Steel Circus releases for PC via Steam Early Access this Thursday, August 8, 2019.