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[Puzzlemaker]

I wish they would put up an official post saying what exactly happened.  Oh well.  It was fun while it lasted.

A port-mortem would be interesting.  From what I understand, one of their big mistakes was trying to make their own engine, and trying to do everything in 3D when 2D would have worked fine.  At least, that's the sense I get from it.

[Darkmere]

From what I've gathered here and there, I think there were some hard feelings when the company split. That's a complete reading-between-the-lines guess on my part, though, I don't have anything solid to back it up.

I do think they could have been onto something good, there just wasn't enough content to really keep it afloat in the end.

Also truth be told it was just too micro-intensive in the endgame to really be that engaging as it was. There's a point in DF where your fort does the simple stuff on its own and you can look at bigger pictures. CE just compounded busywork for a lot of things.

[Greenbane]

It's a real shame Gaslamp Games jumped ship and abandoned the game before it was done.

More than that, I've read several reports that Gaslamp Games went under entirely. Not really official, but a good number of key individuals seem to have parted ways.

Quite a shame. Clockwork Empires had lots of potential. The dev blog showed plenty of work put into it, to the point one would feel something good had to come out of all that. But in the end it seems they just couldn't put a truly memorable product together.

[Intrinsic]

Yes i believe they went under, knowing GG from DoD they would not have just jumped ship taking the money ever if they could have helped it. I think the game was just way more complex to create than they imagined and sucked all their financial resources dry. So they released earlier than expected to try and get some funds in to continue working on it or pay bills. I'm sure we'll see them pop up under other houses at some point or even some start up another studio.

[Antioch]

To be honest for in the short time I tried it it I didn't see anything that indicates well though out gameplay or or a well thought out interface.

But to be honest I also saw several issues with Dungeons of Dredmor as well that should have been obvious from a design perspective.

[genmac]

This is certainly one of the biggest disappointments for early access.  The Dredmor games were very complete but Clockwork Empires failed to deliver on:

* Any sense of fun.  It's just not fun
* Building was so janky and micro intensive that it makes you not want to play
* External threats (bandits, empire) were either super easy or retarded hard
* Managing stockpiles, farms, etc - a complete chore.  You never get any benefit from them, the most you can expect is bare survival
* Useless or unimplemented buildings like the barber shop - supposedly to heal your colonists, it just doesn't work.  Same for naturalist.
* No refund policy.  I sincerely regret spending the money to buy this game and I won't buy a game from anyone that was involved:

WHO IS GASLAMP GAMES?

Founding Partners:
Nicholas Vining : Technical Director
Daniel Jacobsen : CEO
David Baumgart : Art Director

Motley Associates:
Chris Dykstra : Director of Business Development
Derek Bonner : Web Developer & System Admin
Matthew Steele : Audio Specialist
Chris Triolo : Animator
Sean Hamilton : 3D Artist
Joseph Nejat : 3D Artist
Ryan C. Gordon : Hackmaster
Micah J. Best: Systems Programmer
Chris Whitman: Gameplay Programmer
Mathieu Dugon: Community Liaison
Andrew Ferguson: Build Engineering
Stephanie Tinsley Schopp: Public Relations Maverick

edit: The worst thing promised but never delivered (in a reasonable game session, I'm not going to play place the beds for 16 hours to see this):  The lovecraftian element.  There are cults, that affect nothing in the early game, and there is no real sense of horror at all for the vast majority of the game.  Maybe it kicks in after 20 hours of fidgeting with orders and snap tight modules, but nobody is going to spend that amount of time on it.

[NullForceOmega]

Gaslamp folded, hard to squeeze blood from a stone.

[Majestic7]

I think the game had a great idea and they tried, but just bit more than they could chew. Unlike with the shitshow that was Spacebase DF-9, I think the Gaslight dudes & dudettes gave an honest try. No hard feelings there from me, I enjoyed the game and am just sad to see the development stop. This seems to be the theme with Dwarf Fortress-inspired games. Even full teams can't compete with the mad genius of Toady. Have there been any great DF offshoots other than RimWorld?

[Mech#4]

I was going to mention Gnomoria, as I remember it having quite a few updates and release to 1.0 but it seems like there has been little work on it in the last year and not much news from the developer. I believe the game still has a fair amount of content within it but the problems are outstanding bugs and the like.

[Darkmere]

* No refund policy.  I sincerely regret spending the money to buy this game and I won't buy a game from anyone that was involved:

Yeah, there were refunds offered at least once during development, done manually by one of the staffers. Beyond that... I mean, the company folded, I'm not sure what else there is to say.

[forsaken1111]

It's sad to see. I had a lot of hope for this game but it turned out bland and uninteresting.

[Retropunch]

My issue with this kinda thing is that they game developers don't seem to realise when to stop and reign things in, and then not forewarning people that it's going down the drain.

If you've got 15 systems that are poorly implemented, reign it back to 10 and then get those working well (and in a fun way) - the good software developers I've worked with in the past have always managed to spot when things are getting to diffuse and unworkable and reign everything in to the core elements.

Take rimworld - it started off incredibly basic, but the systems worked well in a fun way, and it's now one of the best selling games on Steam.

I really, really liked the gaslight people - they all seemed great, sincere and engaged with the community, however there's a level of sort of...hubris when they can see it going downhill and then not admitting it and pulling everything back in. Most gamers, especially those who are into the 'indie scene' would understand and be quite forgiving - not saying anything and then folding out of the blue is however pretty unacceptable.

[Antioch]

My issue with this kinda thing is that they game developers don't seem to realise when to stop and reign things in, and then not forewarning people that it's going down the drain.

If you've got 15 systems that are poorly implemented, reign it back to 10 and then get those working well (and in a fun way) - the good software developers I've worked with in the past have always managed to spot when things are getting to diffuse and unworkable and reign everything in to the core elements.

Take rimworld - it started off incredibly basic, but the systems worked well in a fun way, and it's now one of the best selling games on Steam.

I really, really liked the gaslight people - they all seemed great, sincere and engaged with the community, however there's a level of sort of...hubris when they can see it going downhill and then not admitting it and pulling everything back in. Most gamers, especially those who are into the 'indie scene' would understand and be quite forgiving - not saying anything and then folding out of the blue is however pretty unacceptable.

I think this is actually where most game developers fail. Doing a few things really good almost always makes for a better product than doing a lot of things mediocre. It also gives you a very good base to expand from with sequels or expansions.

[Mephansteras]

Sad to hear that gaslamp folded. I was hoping this game would get polished up to a point where it'd be worth getting.

[Retropunch]

I think this is actually where most game developers fail. Doing a few things really good almost always makes for a better product than doing a lot of things mediocre. It also gives you a very good base to expand from with sequels or expansions.

Agreed! Keeping it lean, with a few great systems that all work together well - it's why older games are still so playable after 15/20 years; their systems just work well and are fun.
The counter argument can be Banished, which - whilst everything worked together well - attempted so little that it kinda left a bad taste in my mouth - I played it precisely once, and uninstalled it a few weeks later.

To me, this is all a symptom of the whole early access mess - developers keep dragging stuff out rather than putting together a proper finished product as they don't need to actually have a 'sales' date (which leads to the state we're in with hundreds of buggy, half finished steam games).