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)

The Formula works on hardware. We have proof. ACEMAGIC took one look at the original 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System, nodded slowly, and stuffed an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 inside the shell: 12 cores, 24 threads, 5.1GHz boost, integrated Radeon 890M graphics, 32GB of DDR5, a 1TB NVMe SSD, Wi-Fi 7, and a USB4 port. The Retro X5 looks like a prop from your childhood game shelf. It plays Cyberpunk 2077 at 60fps. That is, objectively, the funniest sentence I have written this year.

The design pulls the NES colorway without crossing into licensed territory: grey plastic, a bright red power button, functional mechanical grille vents, and zero RGB lighting screaming “GAMER” at you from across the room. It ships with RetroPlay Box, a built-in launcher that sets up your emulators without the usual three-hour Friday-night yak-shaving session. The tool-free snap-fit lid means you can crack it open and swap RAM like a cartridge. I respect this deeply and I will not apologize.

Is it a $1,049 conversation piece that Nintendo’s lawyers are almost certainly side-eyeing? Yes. Do I care? The Doctor does not care. The Omega7Red Formulae has been validating exactly this kind of decision since before the Pi-Day incident. Slap modern silicon into a retro shell, ship it with a red power button, and call it transformation. That is literally the job. Good job, high-5.

Via: HotHardware

The Commodore Callback 8020 is a flip phone. A FLIP PHONE. With a T9 keypad, a dome LED that glows instead of screaming notifications at you, and SID chiptune ringtones because of course. It runs Sailfish OS (Linux, de-Googled, Android app compatible) and it hard-blocks social media and browsers at the system level using patent-pending technology, which is the most 2026 sentence I have ever written. The colorways are called things like “BASIC Beige” and “ProtoPET White” and one of them ships with a 24k gold-plated Commodore C= key, and honestly? The Doctor approves of the aesthetic choices, even if everything else is [expletive deleted] insane.

Here is the part where I have to say the quiet part out loud: this is NOT Jack Tramiel’s Commodore. It’s a YouTuber who bought the trademarks and hired some old-timers, which is basically someone buying the Batmobile and calling themselves Batman. That said, the thing they built is legitimately interesting: $499 for a phone whose entire value proposition is that it makes smartphone usage annoying enough that you stop doing it. You are paying five hundred dollars for friction. That is either the stupidest or most brilliant product pitch since they put a “close door” button in elevators that doesn’t actually work. Pre-orders open June 30th. Shipping targets Q4 2026. In BASIC Beige, naturally.

My C64 and I spent entire summers on BBSes racking up long-distance bills my parents still don’t know about. The SID chip was the sound of God. So when Commodore (or whoever this is now) puts SID ringtones on a phone designed to cure you of your screen addiction… I don’t know whether to load a disk or throw it across the room. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal.

Via: Tom’s Hardware / Commodore

Gentlefolk of the Punk-iverse, a moment of your time. You know the goggles. The goggles. The ones glued to every top hat at every convention since 2003, doing precisely nothing except looking magnificent. The Doctor has always defended them on aesthetic grounds alone. Well. ASUS ROG and XREAL have gone and run those goggles through some kind of Formula of their own, because the ROG XREAL R1 is a 91-gram pair of AR glasses that projects a 171-inch virtual Micro-OLED screen directly into your eyeballs at 240Hz with a 0.01ms response time. They have electrochromic lenses that auto-tint when you look at the screen and go clear when you look away. They weigh less than a decent pocket watch. They have Bose spatial audio built in. The future has finally caught up to the cosplay.

Is $849 a lot for goggles? Yes. Is it less than the steam-powered difference engine you were going to build in your garage? Also yes. The Doctor is putting this through the Omega7Red Formulae right now: feed in “gaming AR glasses,” crank the Formula, and what emerges is a CyberPunk street samurai overlaid on a SteamPunk airship navigator, both of them seeing things the rest of the crowd simply cannot. That’s not a product description, that’s a destiny. Expect them to ship July 2026, so you have exactly enough time to add a few gears and call it a con build. Good job, high-5.

Via: ASUS ROG Press Room

So apparently Gen Z is buying Polaroid cameras, carrying MP3 players, and purchasing physical CDs in 2026 because they want to, quote, “slow down” and “own their media.” I need everyone to pause and appreciate what just happened here. The generation that was handed the internet at birth, a supercomputer in every pocket, and the collective sum of human knowledge on demand has looked at all of that and said: “No thank you, I’d prefer the format that melts in a hot car.” Good job, high-5! Welcome to literally every argument I’ve been making since 1997.

Here’s the thing, though: the Doctor is not going to mock this. I’m going to validate it. These kids stumbled backward into the correct answer. Physical media is real. Streaming is renting someone else’s permission slip to your own memories. The Commodore 64 crowd (that’s us, you know who you are) never needed a think piece to figure that out, but hey, if it takes a generation of zoomers panic-buying Walkmans to make the point stick, I’ll take the win. The Omega7Red Formulae has always run on physical, tangible, real objects: brass gears, glass lenses, riveted copper plating. Bits evaporate. Objects endure.

The Polaroid Go Generation 3 is the specific artifact making the rounds this month, a miniature instant camera aimed squarely at the analog-curious crowd. It is, objectively, the least efficient way to take a photograph in the year 2026, and I mean that as a compliment. Sometimes the friction is the point. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, kids, but a physical print of a good moment comes close.

Via: BGR / SlashGear

The Chicago Steampunk Exposition 2026 wrapped up today at the Hyatt Regency Schaumburg, and if you were not there, I cannot help you. The theme was “Adventures in Wonderland” (technically the 1893 Chicago Exposition-through-a-looking-glass, which is the most SteamPunk elevator pitch since someone strapped a pressure gauge to a corset). Gail Carriger was on hand, UnWoman provided the soundtrack to your brass-and-velvet fever dreams, and the Hall of Curiosities was presumably full of things that would have gotten a man arrested in actual 1893. Three days, four exhibitor halls, and approximately one metric ton of top hats. The Doctor approves.

If you missed it: the Underground Market, the Midway Market (Artists/Writers/Musicians), the Hall of Curiosities, AND hallway exhibitors across the entire atrium. That is not a convention, that is a siege. They rolled dice (a d20, a d30, a d60, AND a d100) to determine badge prize winners at Opening Ceremonies, which is the correct way to run any gathering of human beings. Why is every awards show not doing this? I ask because I genuinely want to know.

Mark your calendar now: same Hyatt, same interdimensional time portals, and presumably a new theme that will be equally unhinged in the best possible way. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, but a weekend in a parallel 1893 with several hundred gear-wearing lunatics comes close.

Via: Chicago Steampunk Exposition