Someone finally did it. Someone looked at the grease-stained, rivet-popped glory of alt-history dieselpunk, strapped it to a mech, handed that mech a machine gun, and said: “yes, parkour.” Diesel Knights is a 6-v-6 mech/movement shooter set in a pulp-inspired dieselpunk world, and it funded on Kickstarter in forty-two minutes. FORTY-TWO. The Formula approves of this velocity.

The pitch is Titanfall’s fluid movement and mech combat DNA, dressed up in an aesthetic that looks like The Rocketeer crashed into Iron Harvest and they both liked it. No battle passes. No loot boxes. Just mastery, momentum, and the satisfying thud of a diesel-powered war machine doing something physically improbable at high speed. The Kickstarter closed at $526,576 from 7,763 backers, blew through every stretch goal, and the dev posted a fresh update on July 20, so the engine is still running. Wishlist it on Steam now, before the Ancient Gods wake up and ruin the servers.

Via: Steam / Kickstarter

Somewhere in an alternate 1940s, Abraham Lincoln survives, the Reconstruction goes differently, and battleships take to the skies on the back of bold leaps in electricity, magnetism, and gravity. That is the premise baked into every rivet of Steel Seas & Sky Machines, the Portsmouth, Virginia exhibition showcasing the dieselpunk world of artist Tony Snipes and his fictional Portsmouth Aeroshipbuilding Co. Detailed sketches, 3-D models, and digital works, all locked in to an alt-history where the home front didn’t build Liberty Ships, it built Aerocycles and aeroships. The Doctor approves of this timeline.

If you missed the exhibition, Snipes has a live Kickstarter running right now for the Aerocycle Art Book & Model Kit, a product launch straight out of The Yard itself. An art book AND a model kit. In a dieselpunk universe. For actual money you can spend. This is the Omega7Red Formulae applied to “what if WWII-era industrial propaganda was awesome on purpose” and the result is exactly what you’d hope. Go back this thing. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, but a tabletop Aerocycle might come close.

Via: The Steampunk Explorer