Steamlands

 is a real time strategy game released April 18th of 2011. The player controls a tank that tries to destroy the other enemies' tanks first. The game has been in development since July, which is longer than most Nitrome games.

Controls
Arrow keys - Scroll level (if enabled)

Mouse on steering lever - Move tank back and forth

Levels
Levels are determined by small red dots on a map with a mini tank similar to the ones shown on the Ice Temple Skin. A red flag on a dot represents levels the player has successfully completed. The map may also split into two different paths, of which the player can choose which opponents they want to fight.

The player enters the level with a tank that they usually custom-build before the game begins. As they move along the path, another enemy tank will begin to attack. Using the cannons provided, as well as the default coal catapaulting attack, both players attempt to destroy the other's tank first. Upon destroying one tank, the player may move on to attack another enemy tank. After a level is successfully completed, the player gains money, counted in British Pounds, depending on their damage control.

Some levels also include shops at the beginning of them, where the player can purchase items to upgrade their tank's attack and defense or buy game hints or flags. When a flag has been bought, players can also customize it to their liking and save the flag on their computer.

Announcements
A Teaser for the game was first released on September 17th 2010, on Facebook and the Nitrome.com Blog, revealing the first Teaser Image for the game. It is the first blog post released after the 2 month Nitrome game drought. Below is the blog post that accompanied the image:

''I'm sure a lot of you may have noticed and some of you have emailed us about a drought in Nitrome's productivity of late. Well just to put your minds at rest we are not on holiday and we have all been working very hard! We currently have lots of great games both finished and at various stages of production and some of them will be released shortly.''

''While you wait for the first of them we thought we would wet your appetite with a tease at something we have in the pipeline. We're not going to spoil it by giving away many details but this particular game is strategy based and has been in production for a fair amount longer than our average game so you should hopefully find it extra special!''

by Jon

Five days later, Nitrome released a bigger picture of the game, different from the Teaser image. Oddly, this post was posted only on Facebook, and not on the Nitrome Blog, due to unknown reasons.

In December, on Aaron Steeds blog Robotacid, he posted how hard it was developing the game, and the actual Genre of the game. Below is the post: ''“At work at Nitrome I’ve been working on a beast of a game. It’s been months in the making, and has changed my workflow to resemble something more like MVC. One of the big problems in the Actionscript mindset is extending DisplayObjects. You lose control of the rendering. By shifting over to a pure copyPixels model that’s separate from your object updates you get full visual control and you no longer have to waste time updating objects simply because they’re wired into Flash’s rendering model.''

The gameplay of the game I can’t go into, but here’s the screenshot we released on Facebook and the Nitrome Blog:

Clicky

''It’s the first RTS by Nitrome. I honestly thought I hated the genre, but I’ve discovered that RTSs are fantastic fun to code and my homework (Plant vs Zombies, StarCraft 2, Eufloria) have converted me to the cause. I can only hope that this is the beginning of a franchise.”''

The word "Clicky", on the Robotacid post linked to the second picture in the gallery below. Although not known, it is theorized production of this game started in July. If this is so, it might be one of the longest Nitrome games to have been developed.

Trailer 1
Nitrome released a trailer for the game on March 8th 2011. The level involves the player's tank going through a level and destroying three enemy tanks.

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Trailer 2
Nitrome released a second Trailer for Steamlands on April 12, with commentary by Mat Annal and Aaron Steed. The Trailer was released alomst a month after the first Trailer. Mat explains the gameplay of Stemalands, reveals the shop, and the inspiration behind Steamlands.

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Trivia

 * The reason Steamlands took a long time to make is Nitrome is trying to get things "just right". Also they were working on Chisel 2 at the same time.
 * The game, and its name itself, is based off of the science fiction concept of Steampunk, which wonders what if people in the steam powered Victorian era had modern technology like guns and rockets. This is shown by the black-and-white video at the end of each level and one level tip saying that the steam powered guns need charging.
 * The Twin Shot Angel makes a cameo in the first video, displayed on the enemy flags.
 * Baron Battenburg's mustache can be seen on the flag of one of the tanks.