Steam Engines

Steam Engine Simulator is a teaching game about how a steam engine actually works. You build one part by part — boiler, cylinder, flywheel, slide valve, governor — and then you drive it. BUILD IT, THEN RUN IT A 20-level campaign begins with nothing but a fire and a pressure gauge and ends with compound expansion. Every level adds one real component and one real idea, in the order an engineer would meet them. NOTHING IS SCRIPTED The flywheel carries real rotational inertia. The crank-slider is a solved constraint system. The engine genuinely stalls on dead center when the ports close, so you bar it over by hand and learn to time the steam yourself. No cutscenes, no fake gauges — the machine does what the machine does. SEE INSIDE THE MACHINE A cutaway panel shows the slide valve and piston moving in step with the running engine, driven by the same numbers that produce the forces you feel on the flywheel. A HISTORY OF STEAM The back third of the campaign is the story of the real machines: Hero's aeolipile from 50 AD, Newcomen's atmospheric engine, Watt's separate condenser and flyball governor, and Stephenson's Rocket. BUILT FOR MUSEUM USE Every goal is something you make happen rather than a timer to beat or a control to hold steady, so a first-time visitor of any age can finish any level and walk away having built something. MADE FOR TOUCH Playable entirely by touch, with finger-sized controls along the workshop floor and genuine multi-touch, so you can stoke the fire and work the regulator at the same time.