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Iron Danger - tactical combat RPG with simultaneous turns and time manipulation

Abu Antar

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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://irondanger.com/blog/friday-rewind21/

FRIDAY REWIND#21: BACK FROM VACATION!
9.8.2019 - HP Noronen

talvitemppeli-1024x578.png



The whole team has now returned from well earned summer vacation and all ready to rumble again!

The focus has been quite a lot in some play-through testing, to ensure that all the things are working together as we want to. So, in practice it means playing the game by ourselves (lucky us!).

However, here are some of the things that are in-progress and has happened during the vacation.



COMMUNITY REWARDS
Our approach has always been that the road to success is built together with our community and therefore we had special reward program running at our Discord server. Some of the main rewards that we had were to get your own look-a-like NPC to the game. Even though it is very early WIP, we can now proudly show you that we have really started the work with one of our lucky community member’s reward. In future he will be able to dive into game and slay bandit boss that looks very much like him!

Here you can see sneak peek on early phase of workflow. Just looking the shapes from photo and starting to carve in the real facial features to suit the overall game visuals.


juke.gif


And you are more than welcome to join us at Discord if you want to. Even though we currently have no open community rewards program going on, we are really interested to have chat of all of you! And you never know if something still comes up when we get closer to release!



PRESENTATIONS
We are such a strange creatures that we rarely stay out of our work, even during the vacation. There were some nice events this summer, where we were invited to talk about Iron Danger… And of course we went.

First event was Illusion 2019 at Joensuu, where Sami and HP went to discuss about development experiences and learnings of developing such a unique game as Iron Danger is. It was really nice event with good atmosphere!

In the beginning of August, HP also had interview type Q&A session at Assembly 2019 ArtTech seminar. Assembly is biggest computer event in Finland, combining together gaming, eSports and demoscene presentation. That session is also available in depths of interwebs, so if you are eager to learn something more about Iron Danger and us, jump in to take a look!

 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://rpgamer.com/2019/08/iron-danger-pax-west-2019-impression/

Iron Danger PAX West 2019 Impression

Iron Danger feels different from anything I’ve played before, while still maintaining easy-to-understand, familiar mechanics from tactical RPGs.

It’s hard to explain Iron Danger in a single sentence, but perhaps the easiest and most confusing way to do so would be to call it a tactical RPG with heavy time manipulation mechanics. The description piqued my interest, and the time absolutely melted away during our demo while exploring the interesting way time flows within the game.



Based off modern Finnish folklore, the main character has a giant glowing nail jammed through the middle of her chest, which has given her a small amount of power over the flow of time — about five seconds, or ten heartbeats in total. Taking cues from popular media like Back To The Future or Groundhog Day, players must use their experiences to rewind time to get the best outcome for their situation. Each level is self-contained and has a specific goal in mind, such as defeating all enemies or finding magical shards before the bad guys (Northlanders) do. Typically, each level is expected to take about 30-45 minutes, with length depending entirely on a player’s strategy, though the demo presenter shyly admitted with ample experience and practice he’d gotten some levels down to as little as 4 minutes! That being said, with nearly 30 levels to complete, the game packs in plenty of content.

Players begin gameplay in Adventure Mode, which allows them to freely wander a stage until the party is spotted. Then the game flips over to Trance Mode, where Kipuna’s time-bending abilities shine as much as the nail in her chest does. Quickly surrounded, time was reversed until the two heroes were in the clear. Instead of running forward, they darted to the side, throwing a barrel at the enemies in the process and casting a fire spell to blow it up. Unfortunately, that also blew up my characters…rewind. Slowly, step by step, a battle was designed iteratively — my characters dodged and weaved, casting fire spells and shooting arrows, until I managed to not only take down a dozen foot soldiers but a giant mech that was accompanying them.



Later, a second level focused more heavily on puzzle solving — having to attack a ranged caster surrounded by pits too large to jump over, then figuring out how to sneak around another set of enemies to drop a large weight on their heads. Each time, it was really satisfying to see a plan come together…even when it failed hilariously and had to be re-scripted.

Limited to just two characters at any given time (though which characters are present is determined by the story), players must carefully consider their actions as the odds are always stacked in favour of the enemy, and resources to combat these hordes are limited.

Despite all the game demos I’ve had over the years, Iron Danger feels different from anything I’ve played before, while still maintaining easy-to-understand, familiar mechanics from tactical RPGs. While the game is still in development, the team is shooting for an early 2020 release on Steam and GoG, with console releases to follow on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One after that.

More previews:
https://www.gizorama.com/2019/news/trial-error-and-rewind-iron-danger-preview
https://www.gamebyte.com/iron-danger-the-anti-grind-tactical-rpg-for-save-scummers/
https://www.pdvg.it/en/2019/08/25/gamescom-2019-iron-danger-anteprima/
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


Interview: https://www.gamereactor.eu/video/46...ri+Harsila+and+HeikkiPekka+Noronen+Interview/

https://wccftech.com/iron-danger-gamescom-preview/

Iron Danger Preview – Time-Travel Turn-Based Tactics… Wait, What?

Daedalic Entertainment is quickly becoming a much more interesting publisher to me. Much like Focus Home Interactive, Kalypso Media and Bigben Entertainment, Daedalic Entertainment are what you could best describe as mid-tier. AA if you will, though they are dealing with big IP’s in the form of Lord of the Rings. You know what, that’s a great position because it’s there that you find some of the more interesting and experimental titles. The question is: Does Iron Danger fit this description?

One aspect certainly fits this description. That is the fact that Iron Danger is all about time, essentially measured by the heartbeats of the main character, Kipuna. Set in a world of Finnish folklore, Kipuna was just a regular girl until she was pierced in the heart by a crystal that gave her the ability to turn back time. Using this ability – well, you can’t lose. Ever.



“A game without an end-state?” I hear you ask. I asked the same question and it doesn’t seem that there isn’t an end-state. This isn’t to say you won’t die. You’re going to die a lot. It’s more the fact that as soon as Kipuna or one of your characters dies, everything stops. I like to believe that Kipuna can’t fathom losing someone she values so highly, nor does she want to die herself, so stopping time and letting you go back is her defence mechanism.

It’s this mechanism that interests me so much about Iron Danger. Combat, in games, has always been a puzzle of sorts. Only now it’s more in line with that of a puzzle game than anything else of its kind. At any point, the games turns, dictated by a bar at the bottom of the screen, is measured by heartbeats and you can go back a maximum of ten heartbeats. Fortunately, you know exactly what’s going to happen and where the enemies are moving, letting you pre-empt them.

With the battles I was shown during my preview at Gamescom, it’s certainly going to be interesting how it will all work out. Not only because of the fantasy setting, so naturally you have magic and other similar elements, but also due to the fact that the game also has a bit of steampunk to it. Guns and huge-hulking mechs will also be amongst the things attempting to kill Kipuna and her allies, so you’re going to need your wits about you.



More than just your abilities and how you’re using them, you’ll also want to utilise the environment to your advantage as best as possible. You’ll be able to do this both in and out of battle, combining your abilities with what you see around. For example, you see some wet ground so why not use an ice-based ability to freeze it, restricting movement or causing somebody – or something – to slip. Surrounded by long grass? Not only can you hide in the grass to get yourself an advantage, but you could also set it on fire to cause a fair amount of damage to anything foolish enough to run through.

It’s using the environment and your regular abilities combined with the time travel that allows for a different type of game. Turn a corner and happen to run into a group of enemies? Don’t worry, just pop back in time and you could set a trap, lure them in and cripple them before the battle even starts. It’s all quite interesting and something I’m surprised I haven’t seen more of.

All of it reminds me of a mixture of XCOM, with a dash of SUPERHOT and Frozen Synapse. Maybe with a sprinkle of Jagged Alliance. Honestly, I’m just naming games now, though I have to admit that due to the rewinding and what is essentially a slow-motion nature of the game, I was begging for a SUPERHOT style recap at the end of a mission. I did ask about that and it’s something the developers, Action Squad Studios, have considered and are looking at.

It would be a great addition, though even without it there could be a lot to offer. At the end of each level you will be shown stats like how many times you’ve died, how many rewinds, amount of time played during the mission but also the amount of time the mission would take – working from your eventual actions – if time wasn’t stood still or rewinding. It’s designed to encourage exploration of the levels, as well as push the player to replay levels. It wants you to aim for better results, which I can imagine happening if the levels are entertaining and varied enough.



Moving back to the fire for a second. Iron Danger honestly has some of the best fire effects I’ve seen in a game of this type. It’s helped by the colourful design of the game, but just how bright and vivid the fire was, watching it spread, the smoke and embers coming off of it – it all brought out the inner pyromaniac in me. The use of colour with its quite unique style certainly helps to make the game stand out, even where some aspects may not have the same level of detail as some other games.

Due to the mechanics, I’m certainly interested in checking out more of Iron Danger, though it seems I’ll have a little while to wait. It’s scheduled to release sometime next year, 2020, on the PC. When I asked, the developers did say that they hope to release on consoles. That’s understandably going to be down to how the game performs.
 
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LESS T_T

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Codex 2014
Trailer from Daedalic:



Iron Danger by Finnish developer Action Squad Studios will release in March 2020!

Also devlogs from last month.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/899310/announcements/detail/3352290225495887572

Devblog: Skills and more skills

c44ff1364d989436afbb8e54c6f3e7c558fdab1e.png


One of the major things we’ve been working lately is to polish character skills, add some new skills and rework on our skill upgrade mechanics.
Let’s take a look at main things on that work.


GAINING NEW SKILLS
When adventuring in the world of Iron Danger, our playable characters will be gaining new skills on constant pace. As part of minimizing grinding, we have removed experience points and character levels and instead will be giving skills as part of story progress.

Originally we fleshed out a system in which each level will have special focus goal, which was sort of competition between your two characters. On most simple form it could’ve been number of enemies killed by Kipuna versus number of enemies killed by Lemichen. Based on this condition, one of the characters would then receive skill upgrade.

However, more we played with those conditions the more we got into impression that it is not as much fun as we expected and could easily lead into non-balanced character development. Therefore we started to rework on it. Now the system is actually more straight-forward. After each of so called adventure-level, some of the characters will gain new skill upgrade. The skill upgrade can be selected from the pool of available upgrades for that specific character and picking a skill, might add new upgrades to the pool for future. This actually feels really good, because we can have steady supply of upgrades going on and constantly giving something fresh to try out.

There was initial downside with this as well. Now that we get skills more often, we were running out of the skills, so we needed to start working on adding some new skills. This was some unplanned extra work for us, but just plain happy bonus for the players.

a4d64d2ced2e175933a93c8abda93d4ad36bfec5.png


REWORKING SKILLS AND ADDING NEW ONES
Big part of working on skill progress upgrades was to go through all the existing skills and see that their possible upgrades are rewarding enough to receive. As they’ve been added during long time, there actually were also many skills of which upgrade felt worse than original skill. We had 49 character skills for our main characters (this excludes skills like throwing grenades etc and some special characters without skill progression of their own). Tons of modifications were made for those skills, smallest one being some description or skill name changes and with the biggest ones being changing nearly all the functionality of the skill. We also added 12 new skills, so the total number of combined skills of all main characters is now 61, which should be plenty enough. About half of the skills are on the pool of our main protagonist Kipuna, and the rest is split quite evenly between two other main characters.

Initial feeling of the progress and skill changes is very positive. We are currently doing some heavy in-house play testing and will be wiser after that to see if things turned up as good as we wanted or if some work on skills is still required.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/899310/announcements/detail/1591383946851765711

Devblog: Time to Freeze

Time to look something more specific about the gameplay this week. During the journey, characters may learn variety of new skills. One of those things is ice magic.

Even though ice magic is not as powerful for direct damage as for example fire magic, it is very versatile and deadly as tactical element.

Icy ground is slippery, improving knockback and increasing chance of knockdown for people standing on it. In addition you can even cast giant blocks of ice to shield you from incoming projectiles or push enemies back. Handy, eh?

ec7605ef51f78f7892fc302abd9d150a384f38b3.png


And that is not all. If some of the enemy hotheads need calming down, you can use ice magic to lower their temperature and eventually freeze them. And why not turn your companion to frost beast itself by enchanting their blade. That allows them to spread the frost around the battlefield and freeze the enemies with their swings.

60715c079f35c0d780c934cb72e6740eda4b53ff.png


So, if you are looking for versatile control over battlefield, the ice is your friend!
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
This is now being described as a "tactical combat game". The word "RPG" was removed from the Steam description.

More and more games are doing this (changing from "tactics games" to "tactical RPGs" and vice versa during development) and it's starting to annoy me.
 

hepphep

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This is now being described as a "tactical combat game". The word "RPG" was removed from the Steam description.

More and more games are doing this (changing from "tactics games" to "tactical RPGs" and vice versa during development) and it's starting to annoy me.

No worries, we still talk about both (tactical RPG and tactical combat game). For example press release sent with trailer was talking about RPG. :)

You are right though that Steam page is talking about tactical combat game, and as most of the text on updated Steam page was put together by me, maybe I'll give bit of an explanation why we are using that "tactical combat game" as well.

As you have most likely noticed/heard/read, Iron Danger is quite unique in it's game mechanics. The time manipulation is not just small gimmick in there, but it actually creates totally new kind of gameplay experience. What we have noticed in there is that it actually reminds and attracts people with lots of different kinds of gaming backgrounds. For me as big RPG fan it is clearly RPG that I'm talking about, for some of the guys it is more like X-Com kind of tactical game and then there are gamers who have been trying the game and telling that for them it is like tactical Diablo where you can pause, rewind and rethink. What is combined with all of those is the fact that all consider it very tactical and a combat game (which is no surprise because levels are mainly very much combat focused and it is the beef of the game).

Another thing is that when we talk to people about RPG with no grinding (and yes, as told before, we will not have inventory management and experience points as told before. :)) the focus very easily goes into that part instead of what we'd rather want to show about the game first.

Therefore, when we were exhibiting the game in Gamescom, we just at some point noticed ourselves to talk people about the game as tactical combat game which sort of described the game more quickly and seemed to resonate better with wider audience.

So, there are no such major feature changes why we would not call it RPG and for me it is still most comparable to games in RPG genre.


and ...

Seems interesting but if they removed the RPG tag because there isn't any character development, it'll probably not be interesting enough.

No worries there either. Even though we are still not adding weapon/armor upgrades there is good amount of skill based character development. There is 60+ skills split between 3 main characters that give you continuous character development path. It is actually something which we have increased lately.


Thanks for both of you for voicing your concerns, it is very important to hear what people think and feel good or bad about. I hope was able to shed some light for the reasoning and it sounded reasonable enough.
 

hepphep

Action Squad Studios
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hepphep , Infinitron was actually referring to annoyance of moving threads, per his words he is doing it based on steam page tags

Oh, thanks for shedding some light on that.

Even though it should still have RPG tag in Steam and it's in RPG Games category in Steam, so in that sense it should have not changed.
 

hepphep

Action Squad Studios
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hepphep , Infinitron was actually referring to annoyance of moving threads, per his words he is doing it based on steam page tags

Oh, thanks for shedding some light on that.

Even though it should still have RPG tag in Steam and it's in RPG Games category in Steam, so in that sense it should have not changed.
im not sure you understood me correctly. By all means do change it back and forth at least few more times

Most likely I didn't understood, sorry about that :)

Thought that you were referring the tags that Steam page is showing and used for example in filtering games in Steam and mentioning that for those it has been RPG all the time.
 

Abu Antar

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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
If there's no inventory and no exp, what rpg elements can we expect?
 

hepphep

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If there's no inventory and no exp, what rpg elements can we expect?

Another good question!

Even though there is no xp, there is character progress and development. It just does not come through XP, but instead you gain new skills through progress in story. You are able to pick those skills yourself and develop the characters in the way you want to.
It means that you don't have to be grinding those poor bunnies or swarms of spiders to ensure you keep up with the progress and difficulty level, but instead get stronger by going forward in story.

The "no inventory" in practice means that you don't get new weapons, armors and such by picking up loot from dead enemies (once again, no grinding). You have very lightweight inventory in the sense that there are consumable items. These include for example some healing items, explosives, poisonous mushrooms, traps etc. Some of those can also be used by specific characters to be combined with their existing skills (very lightweight crafting) such as ranged character can combine poisonous mushrooms to different kind of poison arrows or for example combine grenades picked from enemy camp to shoot explosive arrows.

The game is also very much story driven, with non-generic party members, separating it from most of pure tactical combat / strategy games.

In many ways it is a game that is hard to put simply in any genre box, because it's very unique. As told before, for me it ticks the RPG boxes and the combat gameplay feels a lot like playing turn-based RPGs (even though being in its own way very different). I'd call the game in that sense something like DOS2 meets Frozen Synapse. Some other might compare it to XCOM meets SuperHot and so on.

So in that sense, it's very different and sort of breed of its own, but for me as long time RPG gamer it ticks the RPG box with it's overall feeling.

All in all, putting things in genres is hard and I'm sure different people will put Iron Danger into different kind of boxes. And that is actually totally okay as we have not been developing the game to fit perfectly into one genre box, but instead focusing on how to make it as fun as possible. :)
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.pcgamesn.com/iron-danger/gameplay

Save scumming is great, and Iron Danger proves it
The sometimes maligned practice is a key mechanic in Action Squad Studios’ CRPG

iron-danger-900x506.jpg

Alright, let’s lay it out. Hands up who’s ever save scummed? This is obviously a flawed way to begin a written article since we can’t see each other, but I bet if we could we’d both have our hands up. Again, a ridiculous assumption to make that further exposes the limitations of the online medium and the hazards its anonymity brings.

Anyway, I’ve save scummed. (In my previous careers as an excessively sentimental pond cleaner and a lawyer who defends people that talk in movies, I’ve also saved scum, but that’s another anecdote.) What I mean by this is that I’ve reloaded a recent save file to undo a mistake in a game, or even a decision I don’t like. It’s especially tempting to do so in strategy games and RPGs – two of my favourite genres – where decisions have wide-reaching consequences.

I have perfectionist tendencies and I hate committing to a playthrough when I know I could’ve made better choices. It feels like fingers wriggling under the skin of my chest, nails crusted with the piss-yellow dirt of an out-of-character conversation response in Disco Elysium or a suboptimal decision in Civilization VI.

There’s a sense in which save scumming is shirking responsibility for one’s decisions, which sometimes makes me feel a little sheepish. Indeed as the pejorative name suggests, save scumming is sneered at by certain gamers for this reason (as well as less reasonable, more elitist ones that have more to do with just wanting to sneer at people for playing a game differently).

Motivated partly by this sheepishness, I went cold turkey on save scumming by playing and completing XCOM: Enemy Unknown on Iron Man mode (and Classic difficulty), which limits you to a single autosave. Everything that’s said in favour of embracing your actions is true: I felt the gravity of every risky decision like a brick on my face. It was also liberating to know that, for better or worse, this was my only timeline. It’s the option of a better outcome that makes it so painful to swallow a worse one. The fact that this is the default approach of Dark Souls and its many imitators is probably another reason why I love them, too.

But I don’t want that same stress or challenge in every game, so having proven to myself many times now that I ‘get’ the appeal of not doing so, I continue to save scum, and now without a trace of my past insecurity. It’s okay to save scum. The only problem save scumming clearly does have is that it’s clumsy.

Loading a saved game takes time, and because it’ll rarely take you back to the exact moment of your mistake, it often costs a fair bit of progress, unless you’ve been manually saving every five minutes and thereby tossing any fun you’ve been having into a shredder of anxiety.

Until recently, removing the ability to save scum was the most elegant solution to this problem. But I’ve now seen another, which takes the opposite approach: embracing save scumming as a game mechanic wholeheartedly.


Iron Danger is a CRPG with a heavy focus on combat, because that’s where its big selling point – a time manipulation mechanic – shines best. Imagine a bright fantasy world, a bit like Divinity: Original Sin 2, and at the bottom of the screen are two tracks that look like music sequencers, one for each party member. These are timelines.

Actions take up space, measured in heartbeats, on each timeline. As with any other CRPG or squad tactics game, your job is to line up a sequence of actions – moving, attacking, using abilities – that’ll get you out of each scrape, generally by killing your enemies. The difference is that you can go backwards or forwards in time freely, undoing enemy attacks, adding or deleting actions, all without penalty. Essentially, it’s real-time with pause – and rewind.

Watching the demo, it’s mesmeric to observe mechanical golems rewinding their swinging fists, and explosions blossoming like flowers in a time-lapse nature documentary. There’s definite novelty appeal, but after that wears off, you might wonder what the stakes are if you can just undo every action. Indeed, if you compare it to a traditional CRPG in which you’re expected to solve each fight first time (unless you save scum, of course), it would be laughably easy.



“It’s not making you overpowered any more than solving a Rubik’s cube makes you overpowered when you can turn back the cube, or you can take out a puzzle piece and put it back in [somewhere else],” programmer Heikki-Pekka Noronen says. “There is no game over, but this is still a really hard puzzle game. It’s not an action game at all, even though it looks like one.”

Thanks to this time manipulation mechanic, fights can be much, much tougher. “It turns the tactical combat much more puzzle-like,” as Jussi Kemppainen, the ebullient game director at Action Squad Studios, explains. “We can have extremely difficult combats in there that you’ll just need to figure out how to solve. If you like games like Divinity: Original Sin 2 or XCOM – these are some of our favourite games, but they have some really hard battles, and I do quick-save and load a lot to try different tactics. I may feel terribly sinful after my 73rd try or something like that, but then I pass the combat and feel like the smartest guy in the universe. In practice you are doing the same time manipulation there, but in a much more cumbersome way.”



Iron Danger’s time manipulation is worked into the story as well as the gameplay, so there’s a narrative and a mechanical reason for you to die lots, rewind, and try different tactics. “We actually want you to die multiple times, experience amazingly difficult situations that you cannot survive, where you think ‘there’s no way I can get this done’. But you will get it done. You’ll find a way, but it can be really hard. And after that, you’ll get out of those situations thinking ‘look how smart I was’!” It’s a philosophy summed up in the game’s tag line: “you will die, but you will not fail.”

I watch this play out as Kemppainen positions his two-person party to ambush a golem. A burly warrior places an explosive barrel next to a tree, and when the golem comes by on its patrol, protagonist Kipuna detonates it with a fiery attack. This knocks over the tree and its trunk hits the golem – or at least, it does after a little rewinding to get the tree falling at the correct angle. That’s another appealing thing about this mechanic: all your clever ideas about exploiting systems that ought to work, but which rely on fiddly positioning to execute, will now go off with much less fuss.



Strategy games and CRPGs have always had a fair bit of puzzle solving about their combat, and many recent, popular examples have been embracing this dimension by adding complexity in the form of stacking systems, player abilities, and interactions with environments and enemies. Even some shooters are doing this now to make their combat more cerebral.

This makes it more satisfying to land upon the solution – finding needles is less challenging without a big haystack – but as fights become more puzzle-like and complex, perhaps it’s appropriate to streamline the search for a solution somewhat, especially when so much of that process relies on trial and error.

Iron Danger is doing this. Save scumming is not only okay – it’s now an elegant puzzle-solving game mechanic.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Heh last week they made a post to try to answer my quandary: https://steamcommunity.com/games/899310/announcements/detail/1696103419683256809

So what genre Iron Danger belongs to?

One of the interesting challenges with Iron Danger is that it is often very hard to put game with so unique game mechanics into specific genre or category.

We have been telling to people that it is pretty much tactical RPG, but on the other hand it is very streamlined experienced with no grinding.

In addition we have been telling that is sort of combination of simultaneous real-time action and very tactical combat that plays a lot like turn-based game. Time rewinding bringing even puzzle-like aspect to the tactics.

Quite often it is easier to let people try it and figure out that it is something very different.

To make it clear for us of how people would categorize the game, we decided also ask opinion of the players.
We had our community beta testing during December, and one question we asked from participants to tell us which categories they think Iron Danger belongs to.
We had long list of categories to pick and even possibility to add your own.
You were allowed to select multiple categories.

The most voted categories were following (with percentage of testers placing Iron Danger into that category):
1. Tactical RPG 71.8%
2. Adventure 56.5%
3. RPG 54.1%
4. Strategy 44.7%
5. Turn-based 37.6%
6. Action 35.3%
7. Puzzle 20%

I'd call it quite an interesting combination.

So, if you have been wondering into which slot you'd put Iron Danger, there is quite a blend for you to pick your favorite while waiting for the release to try it yourself!
 

hepphep

Action Squad Studios
Developer
Joined
May 7, 2018
Messages
31
Heh last week they made a post to try to answer my quandary: https://steamcommunity.com/games/899310/announcements/detail/1696103419683256809

So what genre Iron Danger belongs to?

One of the interesting challenges with Iron Danger is that it is often very hard to put game with so unique game mechanics into specific genre or category.

We have been telling to people that it is pretty much tactical RPG, but on the other hand it is very streamlined experienced with no grinding.

In addition we have been telling that is sort of combination of simultaneous real-time action and very tactical combat that plays a lot like turn-based game. Time rewinding bringing even puzzle-like aspect to the tactics.

Quite often it is easier to let people try it and figure out that it is something very different.

To make it clear for us of how people would categorize the game, we decided also ask opinion of the players.
We had our community beta testing during December, and one question we asked from participants to tell us which categories they think Iron Danger belongs to.
We had long list of categories to pick and even possibility to add your own.
You were allowed to select multiple categories.

The most voted categories were following (with percentage of testers placing Iron Danger into that category):
1. Tactical RPG 71.8%
2. Adventure 56.5%
3. RPG 54.1%
4. Strategy 44.7%
5. Turn-based 37.6%
6. Action 35.3%
7. Puzzle 20%

I'd call it quite an interesting combination.

So, if you have been wondering into which slot you'd put Iron Danger, there is quite a blend for you to pick your favorite while waiting for the release to try it yourself!


Doing anything to satisfy your curiosity! ;)
 

Darth Canoli

Arcane
Joined
Jun 8, 2018
Messages
5,687
Location
Perched on a tree
The most voted categories were following (with percentage of testers placing Iron Danger into that category):
1. Tactical RPG 71.8%
2. Adventure 56.5%
4. Strategy 44.7%
5. Turn-based 37.6%
6. Action 35.3%
7. Puzzle 20%

You should probably get rid of 35.3% of your beta testers, they're retarded.


3. RPG 54.1%

Oh wait, it's worse than i thought ...
 

Harthwain

Magister
Joined
Dec 13, 2019
Messages
4,688
"Simultaneous turns and time manipulation"? That sounds like an interesting approach to combat. Color me interested.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.pcgamer.com/this-tactic...-rewinding-to-make-you-a-time-traveling-mage/

This tactical RPG mixes real-time combat and rewinding to make you a time traveling mage
Iron Danger's time manipulation tools look like video editing software, but with more spells and daggers.

My mage and rogue creep through a patch of tall wheat fields before stumbling into a gigantic steampunk soldier, who brutally cuts my team down in a hail of machine gun fire. Instead of grunting through a Game Over screen or reloading a save, I enter Trance Mode and slide back in time several seconds, just before my terrible blunder.

I take a slightly different path, only to barrel into a group of Northland soldiers who toss a grenade into the wheat field, setting my world on fire. This time when I enter Trance Mode I quickly move my party outside the fields, the grenade still sailing through the air. Back in real-time the enemy chases after me. I carefully time my retreat to bait them into the wheat fields at the exact right moment, catching them in a literal grenade blast of friendly fire.

"It’s like Save Scumming: The Game," says Antti Kemppainen, game designer for Iron Danger. The tactical RPG, from Finnish developer Action Squad Studios, is built around a unique form of quick-loading that's more interactive than mashing F9, thanks to a little time magic. It's like editing a video of your game while you're playing it.

The fantasy steampunk world of Iron Danger is partially based on Finnish folklore and the story of Kalevala, with a dash of giant mechs and bear tanks. As the story begins, young villager Kipuna flees an invasion by the industrialized Northland army, only to fall into an underground chamber and impale herself on a glowing shard. Lucky for her, she becomes imbued with a shard of time magic, allowing her to avoid death by winding back several seconds. I can hit a button to enter Trance Mode, pausing the action and bringing up a mini timeline on the bottom of the screen. From there I can easily scrub backwards—just like video editing—and watch the action reverse, then queue up different moves and attacks as I experiment with the optimal strategy. My enemies are always fixated on my real-time positioning, letting me dodge attacks, set up traps, synergize my skills, or back away and try something else. It's sort of like bullet time for a strategy game.

"I love turn-based games. They give you lots of time to think about what you want to do and explore your surroundings and tactics," says Antti Kemppainen. "But there’s also a lot of waiting around. We wanted to take turn-based gameplay and provide more active situations so you’re in the middle of this cool battle. We came up with this idea of being able to rewind time whenever you want. You need to use it to outsmart enemies, bait them into traps, and use the environment."

Limited time travel during real-time tactical combat is a difficult concept to wrap my head around, but the video-editing UI is fun and easy to grasp. "The core loop is heavily inspired by the animation tools I used while working on various TV series," says Jussi Kemppainen, game director. "So the game is totally influenced by our background in animation. In a way, Iron Danger has flavors of an animation tool at its core, but gamified and made accessible and fun."

Every skill or attack I select in Trance Mode, like blocking with a weapon or shooting off a fireball, is added to the timeline, displaying exactly how long they take to execute. By swapping between my two characters I can easily combine abilities and attacks, like enchanting my blacksmith Topi’s warhammer with fire before he unleashes a powerful blow.

Action Squad experimented with how much time-travel to allow during Trance Mode. "Go back too far and it adds too much complexity for the player and for the AI," says Antti. Five seconds ended up being the sweet spot. The timeline is broken up into individual action points, called heartbeats, which represent about half a second in real-time. Each skill takes a certain number of heartbeats to wind up and execute, followed by a cooldown. With time as my primary tool, it makes sense that my only limitation is time itself.

Where many tactical RPGs make room for a four, five, or even a six-person party, I was disappointed to learn the max party size in Iron Danger was only two. Kipuna gains several allies throughout the linear campaign, including Topi and stealthy rogue Lemichen, but only one can accompany her in each mission. "We played around with more party members but it disrupted the gameflow. It was too chaotic and too much to manage," says Antti.

Almost immediately I find two separate timelines more than enough to handle, especially with how deadly combat plays out. Even the lowliest enemy can easily drain a third of my hit points in a single blow, and if a character falls in battle, I can no longer progress in the timeline, though consumable healing items can be found in each level with a little exploration. Combat is a careful dance of blocks, dodges, and well-timed strikes, as well as properly manipulating the environment.

Nearly every combat situation I come across in the preview build has some interesting environmental hazards that I can use to my advantage, like spike wall-traps, falling log piles, and suspended weights. In a dungeon level I see a room full of rat-like creatures called Keyu. I can use Kipuna’s lure skill to bunch them up, then hit a nearby lever with Topi to send a conveniently placed crushing trap crashing down on them.

Alternatively an oil barrel I picked up earlier can be thrown, then lit on fire with Kipuna’s trusty fireball spell to create a fiery explosion, bringing back fond memories of Divinity: Original Sin 2’s elemental synergies. "You reach a point where you realize it’s a puzzle game. It’s about staying alive long enough to defeat the enemy," says Antti. My first boss battle, a gargantuan, angry chicken, destroys me time and again until I bait it into charging through another crushing trap, this time filled with fuel cans and oil barrels, along with a well-timed fireball.

Thankfully most of the fights, and the missions themselves, don’t last very long, at least in the early levels. The campaign is divided into a linear series of missions in new locations. In between missions I can select additional skills and upgrades. Action Squad wanted to keep the levels fast-paced, with completion times around 30 minutes each. "We focused on keeping the length a bit shorter, making sure the game constantly feels fresh," says Heikki-Pekka Noronen, lead programmer. "We’re aiming for something more linear and story-focused rather than a huge, open world with lots of grinding."

I’ve enjoyed the recent renaissance of tactical RPGs, but Iron Danger manages to feel wholly unique, eschewing traditional RPG fiddliness like equipment management for pure tactical combat. "We wanted to do something that felt creative," says Antti Kemppainen. "We were super glad to be able to do this but it’s also scary to do a game with no benchmark. Nobody else has done anything like this." Iron Danger is due out March 25.
 

Infinitron

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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.gamegrin.com/previews/iron-danger-preview/

Iron Danger Preview

Action Squads Studios have been developing a new tactical combat game, Iron Danger. When playing this, I am reminded of what would happen if three other games, Prince of Persia, Divinity: Original Sin, and XCOM merged together. Combining freezing and rewinding time with tactical gameplay, Iron Danger gives a new style of playing videogames.

resizedimage640360-20200203210952-1.jpg


The main characters are Kipuna, a young village girl who survived an attack on her village and Topi, the quartermaster of the village and now protector of Kipuna. Kipuna is able to use magic such as shooting fireballs and through her, I am able to rewind time or move time slowly. Topi is a fighter who is quite powerful and has abilities such as charging at the enemies or provoking them.

At the end of each level or mission, I am able to select an upgrade for each character to either increase damage or get a new ability. Kipuna gets more magical upgrades whereas Topi is able to receive more physical upgrades. In the beginning, only Topi has the chance to upgrade his abilities since Kipuna has to learn magic from a mentor later on.

resizedimage640360-20200203220518-1.jpg


Combat in Iron Danger is very interesting as it combines the ability to reverse time with tactical combat. I am able to reverse time for 14 heartbeats where each heartbeat is about 0.5 seconds. The time reversal is definitely an interesting addition as it makes combat more exciting to see if I could go through the entire level without having any of my characters losing any health. If Topi or Kipuna gets hit by an attack or if they miss an attack, I can reverse time to change my tactics so that they can avoid the hit or land the attack. One thing the developers mentioned when they gave the preview was that I could hold down the SHIFT-key while giving a command to the character. This way the time will not start running when the command is placed on the timeline, allowing me to give commands to both characters simultaneously without need to rewind in between. Action Squads Studios also told me that holding down the CTRL-key will allow me to give movement commands to both characters and outside of trance allows me to give movement commands to only one character. Sadly, these hints and advice were not given in the game itself. Hopefully these will be added into the game before Iron Danger officially releases.

resizedimage640360-20200203215749-1.jpg


The story itself in Iron Danger is pretty engaging if a bit cliche. Kipuna’s and Topi’s village is attacked by the enemy so they have to report to the capital. Along the way, Kipuna gets injured but doing so allows her to learn magic. Topi makes it his mission to keep Kipuna safe throughout the journey. I found the voice acting of the characters to be really good and enjoyable to listen to. The soundtrack is also very pleasing to listen to. At the end of each level, a progress report is given to show how many times each character could have “died” or how much damage they had taken.

Overall, Iron Danger has the potential to be a very fun game to play. However, there are a few issues with it. I did find the controls to be a bit clunky and it feels to be a drawback to not be able to move the in-game camera around the map. Instead, I am stuck in on the screens where my characters are at. I would not be able to move the camera too far away to see where some enemies are potentially located. The graphics in Iron Danger also feel a bit dated and similar to what I would have seen back in the early 2000s. It does look similar to what I have seen on Torchlight or Fable. There are also some glitches where if I saved at the wrong point, I would not be able to progress the game. There was also one time when I did not save the game and after completing the level, the entire game reset itself and I lost all progress in that level. Still, if these glitches and control awkwardness are addressed and fixed, I can see Iron Danger being a very enjoyable game where players will compete to see who can complete each level fastest and with the least amount of damage.

https://www.godisageek.com/2020/01/iron-danger-preview-whats-in-a-name/

Iron Danger preview | What’s in a name?



Iron Danger is a silly title. Initially this is what put me off even looking at it. You can say that’s unfair, and I probably wouldn’t argue, but the simple fact is that it’s a title that has little to no meaning in the context of the game’s world or genre. It’s just two random words thrown together that make the whole thing sound like some kind of weird mecha action game with iffy localisation.

It’s not that, at all.

In fact it’s hard to categorise Iron Danger in any satisfactory way. It’s neither an RPG nor a straight action game, it’s not an isometric looter either, despite looking like one. In fact, it plays like something both old and familiar, and yet brand new.

Iron-Danger-001-Copy.jpg


I’ve only played a beta build so far, and much of what I’ve seen looks like placeholder, from UI icons and dialogue to cutscenes and animations. If these are not placeholder I apologise, but there’s certainly work needed in these areas in particular.

You play Kipuna, a young girl whose village is attacked by dark forces in the opening half hour, and alongside the burly quartermaster Topi, escapes the onslaught and heads for the woods across the channel. But it’s how this action takes place that makes all the difference. After falling into a chasm and apparently dying, Kipuna is granted a gift by an apparently benevolent spirit which allows her to rewind time by 14 heartbeats. The downside is the whacking great glowing shard embedded in her chest, but what are you gonna do?

Once you have this power, it forms the basis of everything you do going forwards. Topi is a fighter, and uses his huge warhammer to great effect, but he’s an oldan and not as spry as the enemy soldiers ranged against him, nor as powerful as the 12-feet tall battle “Harnesses” employed by the Northlanders. Luckily, Kipuna’s newfound powers help to even the odds.

Iron-Danger-002-Copy.jpg


When you enter combat, time will pause, signifying that Kipuna has entered the Trance. You can now move freely along the time line for the last 14 heartbeats in 0.5 second increments. If any enemy strikes Topi, you can rewind time and reposition him, ordering him to block at the exact moment required to deflect the attack and counter it. Combat becomes a truly tactical exercise, as you constantly manage your timeline to use Topi’s strength in the most efficient way. Every heartbeat matters, and if you paint yourself into a corner the only way to generate more time is to allow it to pass, which means moving around to avoid attacks and increase the blue portion of the timeline.

Topi has a variety of attacks and special moves on an action bar, and can heal. By consuming food scavenged from the surroundings, but his role is to keep Kipuna safe at all costs. Combat feels exciting and tense, and the time manipulation is always entertaining, even when you’re not in combat and you’re just trying to avoid a catastrophe in the world.

The art is chunky and cartoony, similar in many ways to Torchlight, though some areas did feel a little unfinished in the beta build. Hopefully by the time Action Square bring the full release to consoles and PC, they’ll have patched them up.

As it stands it’s an enjoyable adventure with some unique ideas, and a core concept that does something very new with the time manipulation element. There’s a little time before release to iron out the kinks and improve on some of the features, and if Action Square pull it off they could have one of the most interesting titles of recent months.

Iron Danger is coming to PC in early 2020.
 

Infinitron

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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.handsomephantom.com/iron-danger-pax-east-2020-preview/

Iron Danger – PAX EAST 2020 Preview

Everyone wishes they could rewind time and fix any mistake that they’ve made in life, especially when those mistakes are fatal. In Iron Danger, that’s exactly what you can do. The tutorial in our demo showed you all the basics with a single character. As you move through the world, you’ll need to come an eye on just about everything. You might be walking along and suddenly an arrow will come out of nowhere and strike you down. Thanks to the handy dandy rewind feature, all is not lost. All you must do is rewind right before you die and chose a different option. In this case, strafing to one side or the other should be enough to avoid the arrow.

In order to bend time to your will you’ll need to keep an eye on your surroundings and your meter at the bottom of the screen. In the early stages of the game this isn’t that hard of a feat. However, as the game progresses and you are controlling multiple characters it becomes much more difficult.

iron2.jpg

You can switch back and forth between characters and make changes to one without influencing the other character’s actions. As you get familiar with this mechanic it will be easy to focus on one character while the other will go quite a few turns without doing anything. In this case you’ll want to switch to the neglected character and finds ways they can help their partner.

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Each character has different skills and abilities so you’ll need to become familiar with what each character can do. One may be able to block attacks while another needs to dodge them. Clicking on a character can select their timeline and let you make changes to help your party make it out alive. Often, you’ll need to work together in order to solve puzzles and clear other areas.

iron.jpg

The best part about the time hoping is how well it works. It never feels like a gimmick and, though you basically can never die, the puzzle is more about finding ways to trick death rather than just avoid it. Even if you can keep yourself from dying permanently, you will still die a lot.

Iron Danger is shooting for a March 25th release date on Steam.
 

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