Steam

Steam is a color matching game with a strong arcade element.

The player controls Tisha, a little girl riding a steampunk locomotive shooting colored balls from a mounted cannon at ball dispensers (in the first levels they are mole mounds). The train tracks circulate those dispensers as they keep filling the inner field around them with balls. Matching 3 or more balls of the same color makes them disappear. If the spheres accumulate, a floating time bomb appears. Its detonation ends the game.

Special balls with symbols are thrown randomly on the field. They act as a power-up when matched. Nuke balls explode surrounding balls. Haste balls temporally increase the train speed. Color bomb balls pop all spheres of the same color on the field. Time balls temporally stop the dispensers.

A hollow pole with a factory whistle at the left-side of the screen slowly fills with each match. Matching spheres also gives extra ammunition for the weapons. The level ends when the bar is complete and the whistle blown.

The train movement is controlled by the keyboard and the cannon aiming and shooting by the mouse. Some levels have gates, balls or enemies on the tracks, stopping the train movement. Other levels have pinball slider tracks and bouncer springs.

Enemies throw bombs that stop the train or the cannon from working. Most can be killed with one of the weapons, although some have to be color matched with a ball to be destroyed.

The weapons can be selected with the mouse wheel or pressing a number key. Besides the default ball-shooting cannon, there is a weapon with homing bees that wait for an enemy came out from hiding to attack it. The gun shoots a bullet that pops balls and kills vulnerable enemies. The laser cannon shoots a beam that destroys everything in its path. Tisha also can throw herself on balls and enemies, eliminating both in a kamikaze attack.