Mark Twain’s hometown gets taken over by goggle-wearing Victorians every Labor Day weekend, and honestly, that is the most correct thing that happens in Missouri all year. The Big River Steampunk Festival returns to historic downtown Hannibal, September 4-7, 2026, and it is, by most credible estimates, the largest outdoor steampunk festival in the United States. Over 20,000 attendees descend on Main Street for costume contests, Nerf and Tea Dueling, vaudeville shows, workshops, live music, vendors, and a Pet and Human Costume Parade on Monday morning. (Yes. Your corgi can be SteamPunk. The Formula works on dogs. I have tested this.)

This year’s event almost didn’t happen, by the way. The Hannibal City Council nearly tabled the whole thing over one councilwoman’s concern about Friday delivery trucks being blocked. ONE business showed up to complain. ONE. The rest of downtown presumably looked at 20,000+ steampunks and thought, “yeah, we’ll move our freight.” The council came to its senses and approved it. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal.

Hannibal is, as the locals will tell you, “authentically Victorian” and a genuine center of Industrial Revolution commerce: steamboats, steam trains, the whole brass-and-iron tableau. Think Renaissance Faire, except instead of medieval England it’s Victorian America, and instead of turkey legs you’re getting high tea and a duel. Admission to the main festival is free. Some ticketed events cost extra. Your excuses not to go are officially invalid. bigriversteampunkfestival.com

You’re a gambler. The kingdom’s punishment for gambling is getting thrown into a giant industrial prison called the King’s Well, a massive mechanical pit of rusted gears, shadowy tunnels, and relentless contraptions that want you dead. The only way out is up, and the only weapons you have are a deck of cards and whatever cunning the Formula left you with. Turkish indie studio Fire Brick Games has built a dark steampunk roguelite poker deckbuilder that fuses Balatro-style card mechanics with grim, clanking Victorian-industrial atmosphere, and the demo is on Steam right now. Q3 2026 for the full release.

The core gimmick is genuinely clever: you feed cards into rusted machines to trigger attacks, defenses, and special effects, or you hold them and cash in a poker hand for bigger bonuses. Every run is a different build, every machine has different slot requirements, and the four starting gamblers (including the Iron Veteran and the High Roller, because of course) each play differently. It’s Slay the Spire meets a steam-powered loan shark, and The Doctor approves of every single gear-grinding, card-flipping second of it. High-5, Fire Brick.

Go wishlist it. Go play the demo. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, but a well-timed Full House against a rusted kill-machine comes close. Via: King’s Well on Steam

Chaosium, the house that gave us Call of Cthulhu and a respectable body count of player characters, just announced a brand-new tabletop RPG: Time Without Tide. The setting is a fog-choked, post-apocalyptic faux-Victorian world overrun with robots, magic, and (presumably) orphans with serious anger management issues. You play a Delver: someone whose job description is basically “go outside into the horrifying Fog and find out what’s in it.” Spoiler: it’s probably not a tea party.

And here’s the part that has The Doctor’s attention: they’re not using BRP. This is a whole new engine, purpose-built for tactical combat and what the BackerKit page calls “highly customisable character development” (vehicles, gear, companions, mutant powers). So Chaosium built a steampunk game from scratch instead of just bolting Victorian hats onto their existing system. That is either brilliantly committed or magnificently ambitious. Possibly both. The Formula approves of both.

It’s not live yet; the BackerKit campaign is coming. Watch the pre-launch page, get on the list, and tell them The Doctor sent you. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, but a well-timed crowdfunding notification is a solid third place.

Via: Bell of Lost Souls

Somewhere between 2008 and the heat death of the universe, Hungarian director Balazs Hatvani has been building Thelomeris: a city of cogwheels and clocks where the citizens exist solely to feed the insatiable Clock Factory, and no one knows who built it or why. That is, objectively, the most on-brand premise I have encountered since I invented the Omega7Red Formulae. ClockPunk. DieselPunk. Noir. A city that is itself a machine that makes more machine. The Doctor approves so hard he pulled something.

And they got Mark Hamill to play the mysterious Stranger and serve as a script consultant. Luke Skywalker. The Joker. That Mark Hamill, in a brooding Eastern European clockwork dystopia. The Formula was applied by a Hungarian filmmaker with impeccable taste, and the result is either going to be extraordinary or the most beautiful catastrophe ever committed to green screen. Either way I win, because both outcomes are things I want to see. The film has been in development since 2008, which means it has been cooking longer than some of my laboratory assistants have been alive. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, but apparently this movie is going to try.

A trailer exists. Hamill is credited. The city is dark, cold, and run entirely on clock-powered despair. Someone please get this thing released before the gears stop turning. Via: Screen Anarchy

The Chicago Steampunk Exposition is back, and this year they pulled off something that earns them a genuine high-5 from the Doctor: they got Gail Carriger on the guest roster. If that name doesn’t ring your brass bells, fix that immediately. Carriger is the archaeologist-turned-novelist behind the Parasol Protectorate series, the Finishing School books, and roughly a dozen other reasons to cancel your weekend plans. Victorian werewolves, dirigibles, parasols as weapons, tea as a survival mechanism. The Omega7Red Formulae practically wrote those books itself.

The Expo is doing its usual trick of cracking open interdimensional time portals back to the 1893 World’s Fair, because apparently just having a steampunk convention isn’t dramatic enough and they deserve full credit for committing to the bit. If you are anywhere near the Chicago metro and not already planning attendance, I cannot help you. Some people are beyond the reach of the Formulae. The rest of you: find your best waistcoat, oil your goggles, and go meet the woman who made Victorian etiquette into a contact sport.

Via: Chicago Steampunk Exposition

Catalyst Game Labs just dropped the Frostpunk RPG: Core Rulebook into retail this week, and yes, the Formulae approves. The video game already nailed the SteamPunk-survival-city-building sweet spot (coal-fired generators, the last city on Earth, morally crushing choices before your morning tea), and now 11 bit Studios and Catalyst have handed you the keys to run that frozen nightmare yourself at a tabletop. Players manage the last city on Earth as resources run out, navigate Hope and Discontent city mechanics, and apparently make each other miserable with the Dice Core engine. $49.99 MSRP. That is a bargain for the number of friendships you will destroy.

The Doctor has been watching Frostpunk eat city-builders alive since the original launched, and the sequel has only gotten meaner, so a full tabletop adaptation was, frankly, overdue. If your game group survived Pandemic with their relationships intact, consider this the next stress test. Just remember: the law must be passed. It’s always the law.

Good job, high‑5, Catalyst. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, but a well-timed coal shortage comes close. Via: ICv2

inXile Entertainment just dropped a new Clockwork Revolution trailer at the Xbox Games Showcase 2026, and the Doctor approves. We’re talking a first-person steampunk RPG set in Avalon, a Victorian metropolis ruled by a tyrant named Lady Ironwood who has been quietly rewriting history via time-travel device to keep her boot on everyone’s neck. You play Morgan Vanette, a street-gang scrapper from the wrong side of the tracks, who gets hold of a Chronometer and starts kicking the legs out from under her carefully curated timeline. BioShock Infinite called, it wants its DNA back, and inXile said: fine, we’ll take it.

The new footage shows off character creation, weapon blueprinting (you carry ONE gun the whole game and build it into a monster), steampunk gadgets as deployables, and the class-war subtext is about as subtle as a wrench to the faceplate. The Formula was applied to “first-person RPG” and the result is grand airships, clockwork automatons, and a city that changes shape depending on which moments you’ve gone back and corrupted. Time travel plus consequences plus gears equals a delivery mechanism for EXACTLY the kind of retrofuturist power fantasy this blog exists to document. It’s currently slated for 2027 on PC and Xbox Series, so yes, patience will be required. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal.

Via: Sortiraparis | Wishlist on Steam

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania is already a place where the past refuses to stay dead. So naturally, that’s where the Key City Steampunk Convention has set up shop, and this year they are leaning ALL THE WAY in. The 2026 theme is Worlds of Tomorrow: think Metropolis, think The Rocketeer, think airships over gleaming skylines and a city of marvels where high technology and high fashion collide. August 7th through 9th. The Doctor has circled the calendar in red ink and brass rivets.

They’ve got makers, panels, workshops, tea dueling (yes, tea dueling is a real and legitimate combat discipline, and I will die on that hill), vendors, live entertainment, costume contests, and a guest list that includes a chainmail artist known as Steampunk Boba Fett and a one-man Steampunk musical act named Steamcordia who plays whatever instruments happen to be lying around his apartment. That last one is either genius or a noise complaint waiting to happen. Possibly both. The Formula approves of both outcomes.

If you’re anywhere near the East Coast this summer and you have not yet attended a steampunk convention, this is the one to fix that. Wyndham Gettysburg. Bring your goggles. Bring your airship captain’s coat. Do NOT bring a mundane attitude; it will be confiscated at the door. Grab your tickets before August 6th or pay the at-door premium like a civilian. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal.

Gentle reader, I have been informed that TeslaCon, North America’s largest immersive SteamPunk convention, has chosen its 2026 theme, and that theme is The Wonderful Land of Oz. November 12-15, Middleton, Wisconsin. They are transporting the whole operation back to 1896, complete with Tik-Tok and the Wizard, and I want you to think about what that means for exactly five seconds. Tik-Tok. A clockwork automaton. In a SteamPunk convention. The Formula practically applied ITSELF.

Look: the Tin Man is already a cyborg with existential feelings about his own humanity, the Scarecrow is running on no wetware whatsoever and still outperforms half of Congress, and Dorothy is a small child who defeated a theocratic authoritarian twice using nothing but found objects and sheer audacity. Apply the Omega7Red Formulae and what do you get? Airship Kansas. Brass poppies. The Yellow Brick Road as a literal gear-driven conveyor belt. A Wizard who is, at least, honest about being a fraud (which is more than most). The Doctor approves of this crossover on a molecular level.

If you are within driving distance of Madison, Wisconsin this November and you are NOT going to this, I genuinely cannot help you. Tickets are up at teslacon.com. The hotel fills fast, so don’t be the person who waits too long and ends up sleeping in an airship. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal.

Via: TeslaCon

The good people at Clockwork Alchemy have declared their 2026 theme and it is, frankly, exactly what the Formula ordered: Rogue Makers & Air Pirates. October 16-18, Redwood City, California. Grand Bay Hotel. You show up, you craft wonders that others fear to dream of, you seize the sky by the lapels. That is the entire pitch. That is enough.

If you have been waiting for the universe to give you permission to build a ridiculous aetheric contraption, strap on a flight coat, and demand that the horizon respect you, congratulations: the universe just sent you a formal engraved invitation. Artists’ Bazaar applications are open right now. The Doctor will be watching the attendee photos with great personal interest and mild professional jealousy.

Via: Clockwork Alchemy 2026: Rogue Makers & Air Pirates (theme art by Laura Carns, Gretchen Kisler, Danielle Hill, and Charlie Wong)