Game News Iron Danger combines Finnish mythology, steampunk and tactical combat with time manipulation

[Infinitron]

Tags: Action Squad Studios; Iron Danger

Iron Danger is an upcoming fantasy RPG by Finnish indie developer Action Squad Studios. When we first learned about the game back in May, it was quite confusing. The description on its Steam page describes Iron Danger as a "story-driven, turn-based, tactical RPG with simultaneous turns and time manipulation mechanics" and also as a "streamlined, action-packed single-player game". Meanwhile, the official website calls it a "tactical action adventure game". As if that wasn't weird enough, the game's story aims to combine Finnish folklore with steampunk elements. This week's release of a pre-alpha combat video should clear thing up a bit, however. What we have here is basically a real-time RPG that pauses at fixed intervals and gives you the ability to rewind to previous points in time. With its party of two characters, colorful presentation, and focus on environmental interaction, the Divinity: Original Sin influence is obvious. It's spastic as hell, but it does look pretty. Here's that combat video, an earlier gameplay trailer, and the game's description:

Iron Danger is a story-driven, turn-based, tactical RPG with simultaneous turns and time manipulation mechanics. A never before seen combination, which brings new level of depth into tactical combat.

It is a streamlined, action-packed single-player game in which repetitive grinding is kept to a minimum and every moment advances the story.

In this fresh fantasy world of warrior shamans and machine fumes, you take on the role of Kipuna, a simple village girl, who becomes imbued with a cosmic power that grants dominion over time and death. The player controls Kipuna and one of two individual companion characters in tactically challenging battles against a variety of different threats. At center stage in combat is the unique time shifting mechanic that represents Kipuna’s magical influence over the flow of time. It gives the player the ability to rewind at any point with fraction-of-a-second precision, pinpointing strikes to enemies’ unguarded moments, deflecting and dodging attacks exactly when they happen, synchronizing magical and physical attacks to overwhelm difficult enemies, and overcoming impossible odds through trial and error.

Iron Danger challenges you to think of combat and puzzles from a different perspective: you may be an experienced gamer, who knows all the tricks, but you’ve never played a game like this.

FEATURES

• Use unique time-rewind mechanics and experience totally new take on tactical combat and puzzles
  
• Enter into deep tactical combat with simultaneous turns and take advantage of highly interactive environment to succeed
  
• Adventure in a world of steampunk fantasy and meet it’s unique inhabitants inspired by Finnish folklore
  
• Fight epic boss monsters on the path to fulfill your destiny
  
• No grinding. Character development is tied to actions that player characters will take.

WORLD OF IRON DANGER

Iron Danger is set in a world of lofty fells, primeval forest, and placid lakes... as well as living gods, monsters of steel and smoke, and supernatural doom dwelling beneath the earth. The city of Kalevala, home of the humans who rebelled against the gods and forsook their protection, shines in the middle of this world, surrounded by towns, sea lanes and and woodlands under its protection. But from the frozen north, a witch queen is leading her army on a quest for vengeance against the lords of Kalevala. Ancient ruins from the days when gods dwelled on the earth are opening to unleash forgotten powers, tempting humans and striving to overtake the world.​

I'm not sure if Iron Danger is really the Codex's kind of thing, but I guess we'll see how it looks when it comes out next year.

 

[Ninjerk]

Did someone say "Finnish lunatic?"

 

[ItsChon]

Looks like it has some potential.

 

[Kev Inkline]

The banter/taunts of the mobs sound like a regular Finnish weekend after the nightclubs have closed, I give you that.

 

[Farewell into the night]

Hey, it looks interesting. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Shaewaroz]

I've been wanting an RPG based on authentic Finnish folklore for a long time, so I'm hoping this will deliver on those expectations. Plus there are never enough quality tactics games around. So here's hoping for their success.

 

[thesheeep]

That combat system honestly looks very uncomfortable to play.
It is basically real-time with extremely frequent and automatic pauses - a constant interruption of the combat flow.

Why not make it more turn-based? You plan ahead for X seconds, the enemy does, then turns are executed - would still allow you to rewind time but be MUCH more fluid.

 

[Ranarama]

Looks a bit like someone was making an RPG and left in the animation timeline controls. Also might be good. We'll see.

 

[ArchAngel]

Dear god, that combat looks more irritating than Pillars one. Pass.

 

[Flou]

PERKELE! That's all I have to say on this game.

 

[Morality Games]

I'll think about it, but there's no harm in wishlisitng it.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I'll look at this, but I'm currently unsure about the combat. Seems... hackled or confused perhaps.

 

[Drowed]

"It is a streamlined, action-packed single-player game"(...)

Well then, they could not have picked a worse way to describe and sell their game to Codex.

That said, it looks fine, so who knows?

 

[Valky]

Finnish mythology?

 

[MRY]

The Kalevala is sadly underread (and perhaps underrated) among epic poems, perhaps due to its being committed to writing so much later than the more familiar ones. Many great lines. There are lots of funny ones (especially some of the sex/battle of the sexes stuff) and also lots of very moving ones. For instance:

When I was younger
I would not have believed them
though a hundred had said it
and a thousand tongues had told
that I would sink to these ways
that I would fall on these days—
the days I have fallen on
the ways I have sunk into.

Or

... guard us, fair God
from the whims of men,
from the wiles of hags; ...

No idea how well they read in the original Finnish, of course. Game seems weird and not really what the poem evokes for me, but ultimately a Finnish developer has a much greater right to decide how to employ his cultural heritage in his own game than does an armchair critic.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

As you can probably take it from Tolkien (even if he admitted his attempts to fully learn the language were "repulsed with heavy losses"), it reads even better in original Finnish. This however is more of a problem of language than anything else, as English simply cannot be used in the way the song is. The form of the Kalevala is heavily tied to it originating in an agglutinative language, and the way in which words can be modified, which is quite important for the form of the song as words are frequently morphed in unusual or even entirely unique ways (this IIRC was a big thing for Tolkien for example, "invention of new words for the joy of it" he called it I think) in service of the aesthetic while the meaning of the words remains evident and clear.

The second quotation you had originally goes:

Varjele, vakainen Luoja,
kaitse, kaunoinen Jumala,
miesten mielijuohtehista,
akkojen ajatuksista!

 

[MRY]

The second quotation you had originally goes:

Varjele, vakainen Luoja,
kaitse, kaunoinen Jumala,
miesten mielijuohtehista,
akkojen ajatuksista!

Beautiful.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Death of Lemminkainen, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1897

 

[Hobo Elf]

Gameplay looks like utter trash. That + muh steampunk just makes this DoA for me at least. A shame, I've wanted a proper game with Finnish mythology for a long time now.

Paskan tekivät.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Joo on se hieman perseestä kun alkavat steampunkilla perseilemään. Se piirros jostain fantsu-suurkaupungista on hieman hakoteillä kalevalaisesta ilmapiiristä.


The steampunk aspect is something that's kind of iffy to me too, feels rather out of place and more of a case of shoehorning in an disparate aspect that gives one of the leads a hard-on. So is having some huge metropolis for people who "rebelled against the gods", particularly considering that the gods in the Kalevala and Finnish mythology weren't really something you would or would even have any reason to rebel against because they are more akin to animistic spirits that embody and lord over some aspect of the natural world and important for spells, ie Tapio is the king of the forest and Ahti is the king of water and fish. And in the Kalevala itself Väinämöinen is presented very much as a god, seeing as besides being an ageless wizard and singer he is the son of the wind and sea.

The protagonist is pretty close to how it would work though, being born with special powers fits. Albeit Kipuna is considerably behind the curve compared to Kullervo, who basically won the superpower lottery of mythical heroes (including the oddly specific ability of summoning silk fishing lines) albeit also received the basic competence and luck of Homer Simpson and Donald Duck. Much of the first rune of the Kullervo cycle is particularly amusing when much of it is first devoted to Untamoinen's many attempts at infant murder, followed by Kullervo being the worst possible worker ever at everything, culminating in Untamoinen managing to swindle some goods from the smithy Ilmarinen in trade for the worthless slave.

 

[curry]

I need to point out that Kalevala isn't authentic Finnish mythology and folklore. It's from the 1800s and heavily influenced by its author's and the political elite's desire to promote Finnish nationalism.

Also, I kinda understand where the cyberpunk theme is coming from. In Kalevala there's a machine called Sampo which is able to generate an infinite amount of riches.

 

[MRY]

I need to point out that Kalevala isn't authentic Finnish mythology and folklore. It's from the 1800s and heavily influenced by its author's and the political elite's desire to promote Finnish nationalism.

How much "authentic mythology and folklore" do we really have? For instance, almost everything we have of Norse mythology comes from Christian authors, and a great deal of it comes from eddas that were even more agenda-driven than Lonnrot's work. The most authentic, I guess, would be Greek or Roman mythology (since that was written down while it was still the official religion), but presumably there, too, our sources were writers reworking folk material for an elite audience with its own agenda.

As I said before, the Kalevala came late and for that reason (perhaps similarly to late-blooming religions such as Mormonism or Scientology) we are probably more apt to be skeptical about its creation. But I dunno; we tend to think of other ethnographical works of the same era/philosophy (like the Grimm Brothers') as pretty authentic.

Maybe my fondness for the Kalevala (and for Lonnrot) is making me too credulous, though.

 

[Kev Inkline]

My Summer Car is Finnish (magical) realism and all you need for a genuine experience.

Also, some of the vehicles run on diesel I think, so it's diesel punk if sorts.

 

[Fenix]

Maybe interesting game, but I feel combat is too chaotic and less puzzle, and not much of something you could plan andexecute - at least in video.
Maybe later in game or with that second character it would be less of chaos and more a planning, who knows.

How much "authentic mythology and folklore" do we really have?

When folklore is really "folk" and was not driven by clearly political reasons - I'm talking in general, first time and only I have heard about Kalevala was in The Compleat Enchanter of L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, so have no thoughts about it.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I need to point out that Kalevala isn't authentic Finnish mythology and folklore. It's from the 1800s and heavily influenced by its author's and the political elite's desire to promote Finnish nationalism.

Also, I kinda understand where the cyberpunk theme is coming from. In Kalevala there's a machine called Sampo which is able to generate an infinite amount of riches.

Well it's what would be a tertiary source, since it's a set of songs collected and then curated and edited by Lönnrot. Its roots are authentic, but in itself Kalevala today when it comes to folkloristics today is notable for studying where each component used for it came originally and the regional variations of that Urmyth. Otherwise in the field it's more comparable to The Origin of Species in that it is of historical significance to the field itself as one of the first undertakings of its kind.

As for possibly steampunk connections, a much more likely connection point than the Sampo is when Louhi fashions herself a body of a terrible bird from wood and brass of her shipwreck.

How much "authentic mythology and folklore" do we really have? For instance, almost everything we have of Norse mythology comes from Christian authors, and a great deal of it comes from eddas that were even more agenda-driven than Lonnrot's work. The most authentic, I guess, would be Greek or Roman mythology (since that was written down while it was still the official religion), but presumably there, too, our sources were writers reworking folk material for an elite audience with its own agenda.

As I said before, the Kalevala came late and for that reason (perhaps similarly to late-blooming religions such as Mormonism or Scientology) we are probably more apt to be skeptical about its creation. But I dunno; we tend to think of other ethnographical works of the same era/philosophy (like the Grimm Brothers') as pretty authentic.

Maybe my fondness for the Kalevala (and for Lonnrot) is making me too credulous, though.

This is mostly correct. Generally speaking a folklorist today would aim to collect "living material" over everything else, that being oral and without any outside formal codification to it. Urban legends would be an example of modern folklore. Elias Lönnrot did collect his material from a living oral tradition, and he did use such material collected by others for the revised edition as well. The Kalevala itself is properly described as Lönnrot's interpretation of the source material he had. As for the primary source material itself, there's whole spades of it in Finland because of the popularity of such study and recording in the 19th century and early 20th century, which also reflects in Finnish folklorists being rather prominent in formation of the field in academics (ie, Julius Krohn's Historical-Geographical Method for tracing variations to an original). Another way to see it is that IIRC the folklore archives of the folkloristics department and SKS (Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Finnish Literature Society) are the largest of their kind in the world.