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Have you played… Steel Circus?Rest In Peace, my beloved MOBAball
Rest In Peace, my beloved MOBAball
There’s a handful of films at home that the family and I very rarely end up watching. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The Revenant. The Imitation Game. Her. The Judge. Absolutely outstanding films, but they’re also what we call “heavy” - and we seldom have the emotional energy to sit through two hours of “heaviness” at the end of a long day. So we pretty much never bite the bullet and say “You know what? Let’s finally do this.”
Today, I’m biting the bullet. I’m gonna talk about something that makes me very sad to think about. It’s a game calledSteel Circus, and last month the developers bit their own bullet, shut down the servers, and pulled the plug on their dying game. Which is such a gruelling shame, becauseSteel Circuswas probably the most fun I’ve had in any competitive game sinceRocket League.
Like Rocket League, Steel Circus excelled in particular at two things. The first was its accessibility, both as a player and as a spectator. A quick brief on the abilities of the different champions, and you’re all set to marvel at some pro-level matches. And the second was how fantastic the team plays were. When your team clicked, it was thrilling to a degree I’ve rarely experienced in games. It was a sport of extreme depth, one which rewarded quick decision-making, positioning, and reading your opponents.
Since its Early Access release back in August last year, I’ve had to watch despairingly at the concurrent player count dwindle from its initial four digits down to three, then two, and finally to zero. It was a polished game, filled with nuance and fast-paced plays, but it seems great design and great implementation aren’t all that matters. I just hope that someone else decides to take what Steel Circus did, and turn it into the success it always deserved to be.
