KickStarter Iron Harvest - RTS set in alternate reality of 1920+ from KING Art Games

[Space Satan]

Out of all options they decided to make a DoWII reskin...what a shame

 

[Funposter]

Out of all options they decided to make a DoWII reskin...what a shame

Do you mean a Company of Heroes reskin? Because that's what DOW2 is (although it's a bad one).

 

[Infinitron]

Now published by Deep Silver: https://kingart-games.com/article/57-iron-harvest-devblog-12-april-2019#info-publisher

Info: We have a Publisher!

Over a dozen publishers have voiced interest in publishing Iron Harvest. We spoke to everyone and entered negotiations with a handful. In the end, we have partnered with the publisher we think is the perfect fit for Iron Harvest: Deep Silver.

Deep Silver are mostly known for publishing the Metro, Saint's Row and Dead Island series. They've also proven that they can support crowdfunded games with such hits as Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Wasteland 2 and Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

We agreed with Deep Silver that KING Art will retain total creative control. Deep Silver have also committed themselves to help with things like production, first party relations e.g. so we can concentrate to fulfill all of our promises towards you. With their support, more content, potentially more platforms and even a level editor are now on the horizon (see below).

We both agree that Iron Harvest is a great opportunity to make a mark on the RTS genre and to release something special. We’re super happy to have found a team that is so committed to the project!

 

[Burning Bridges]

shouldn't this release like years ago?

 

[Catacombs]

shouldn't this release like years ago?

Seriously. I thought it was coming out on Steam the last time I checked.

 

[ZeniBot]

Epic Store Exclusive any day now after that publisher announcement.
*edit because of post below.

 

[Infinitron]

Epic Store Exclusive any day now after that publisher announcement.

 

[ZeniBot]

Thank you based admin. Finally a COH styled game without lame Relic to shit it all up. I'm now really looking forward to this game.

 

[CyberModuled]

Well no EGS logo so far thankfully

 

[LESS T_T]

September 1st, 2020:





Confirms this is coming to Steam and GOG: https://kingart-games.com/article/63-iron-harvest-devblog-16-august-2019

Many of you feared the PC version of Iron Harvest would be an Epic Store exclusivity game. We heard you loud and clear, the game will NOT be exclusive to any store!

Instead, we can now confirm that the PC version of Iron Harvest will be available on Steam, GoG and other stores.

You can add Iron Harvest to your Steam Wishlist right now here.

You can also add Iron Harvest to your GoG Wishlist here.

The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions will be available at launch on their respective stores.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

game looks nice. I wish a game like this would release one day with a fucking speed scale because most of these games end up that you have all these cool units but you can't really control them in any realistic manner, things happen too fast and not in a realist way. Real war does not take place at the speed these RTS games do, and the issue is you are supposed to be a commander, but you can really only concentrate on giving one or two units orders so you either ignore the rest of the units who sit around doing nothing or you can draw a big green box around all your units and click on the enemy.

And honestly its this last point that might be most annoying. The fact is that in many many RTS games concentrating on building units really fast and then just drawing a big green box around them and clicking on one enemy strong point after another usually works..sometimes you might have to leave a contingent of guards behind or something--but it really does seem to work very often by just mass select and attack and not bother with combined arms or tactics or even worry about if you might be attacking with non combat units like nurses or farm animals or something, it simply usually does not matter..and its sadly at this point I often will exit out and never play whatever game in question this might be.

There have been a few exceptions to this, like the close combat games which is one reason that series was so much fun for me; you could attempt to apply actual tactics like a patient and well placed ambush of a tank using a bazooka team or maybe combined arms assault against a fortified church and church steeple.

This games visuals look awesome. But watching the game play video makes me think its just another one of those RTS games without much actual strategy, more just random clicking. The main issue is almost always that units just move way to quickly across the battlefield. The men are moving about 30-40MPH at all times it appears at least, everything is going at a way too unrealistic pace. I understand an actual realistic pace might be too slow, but there is something in between.


edit: I have wish listed the game. Perhaps there is a speed slider and I just don't know about it. Or maybe it will have mod support and somebody can mod it in. actually if the game had mod support that would be awesome, I bet people could come up with all sorts of good ideas.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamesn.com/iron-harvest/warcraft-3

Iron Harvest draws from alt history and Warcraft 3’s storytelling
Inspired by Jakub Rozalski's iconic artwork, Iron Harvest draws from genre icons - but adds enormous, hulking mechs

In the foreground of the painting hanging on the office wall of Iron Harvest’s creative director, Jan Theysen’s, peasant women harvest hay under a baking summer sun. It’s an evocative scene, reminiscent of work by famous English landscape painter John Constable. In the background of this pastoral idyll, however, half obscured by heat-haze and whisps of cloud, smoke billows from an enormous mech, its canon-like arms casting a threatening shadow over the fields beneath.

The painting is part of Polish artist Jakub Rozalski’s 1920+ series, which serves as the inspiration for Iron Harvest’s dieselpunk take on the First World War. Theysen says that he originally stumbled on Rozalski’s work without any intention to use it in a game; “the first time I saw his artwork, it was just ‘this is cool’. It wasn’t like we were thinking about it in terms of game development.”

In a desire to move away from the WWII setting that has played host to so many real-time strategy games, however, King Art eventually found themselves returning to 1920+. In Rozalski’s world, these enormous mechs were originally meant to help with farmwork. But as the First World War broke out, these machines were adapted for the battlefield. The Great War would rumble on for five long years, eventually giving way to the unsteady peace in which Iron Harvest – named for the annual real-life excavation of WWI detritus from fields up and down the Western Front – takes place.

The game’s three factions – Polonia, Saxony, and Rusviet – each have their own strengths and weaknesses, but the micro-level play that defined RTS giants such as StarCraft is limited to the opening moments of the game, as each players rushes to secure oil pumps and iron mines that will fuel their economy. Base building is of limited importance, with a small selection of structures, limited in most cases to just one small area of the map, responsible for all of your unit production.

Instead, Iron Harvest focuses on the macro-level, and once you’ve got to grips with the early game, tactical nouse becomes just as important as the efficiency of your armies. The result is a battlefield which evolves and changes over time, with a frontline that’s in near-constant flux.

Your mechs are the stars of the show, but what’s most striking is the variation on offer. Theysen says that “you want to have cool-looking units, but if you have ten different kinds of tanks, it becomes a little bit tricky to differentiate them, but having mechs helps a lot with that.” Polonia’s trashcan-shaped Straznik scuttles into battle on four spidery legs, gatling guns mounted on its side tearing enemy units apart, while the Smialy strides confidently around the outskirts of the battle, picking enemies off from the sidelines.

Iron Harvest’s dieselpunk aesthetic means that these aren’t elegant machines, but Theysen says that’s an important part of combat – “we didn’t want the game to be too fast, so it helps if the mechs aren’t running and jumping around, but it’s a slower, more deliberate pace with clunky machines.” That speaks to the tactical nature of the game – larger units will only fit down certain routes, and committing an important unit in one direction means that it could take several minutes to return to protect another flank.

Much of Iron Harvest revolves around maneuvering around your opponent, attempting to gain the upper hand through misdirection and the use of stealthy flanking routes, but when two armies actually meet, sparks – and rockets – fly. Soldiers armed with everything from pistols to field cannons march into battle accompanied by their enormous mechanical cavalry, but while the mechs may have most of the firepower, the tide of a battle can turn quickly. A well-aimed blast from a four-legged Mocny’s roof-mounted cannon can all but wipe out a squad of riflemen, but if those same soldiers are able to scavenge a rocket launcher from a fallen foe and scurry back to base to replenish their ranks, they can return to the fight to topple the enemy mech.

And when a mech falls, its impact is felt on more than just its owners’ economy. As they explode, their chassis is left on the battlefield, creating a barricade that remains until it’s manually removed. For a player on the back foot, the skeletons of both friend and foe can act as a crucial defensive line, preventing enemies from advancing further. For attacking enemies, downed mechs can block flanking routes and make it more difficult for damaged units to retreat. Each time the dust settles and surviving soldiers scurry back to base, Iron Harvest’s close-quarters, almost claustrophobic maps are entirely changed, and you’re forced to re-shape your strategy for the next assault.

Iron Harvest treads new ground with its alternate history and aggressively inelegant technology, but Theysen makes it clear that the developers are aware of the RTS’s rich history. The structure of the campaign, which focuses in on each of the factions in turn, draws from Warcraft 3, which Theysen thinks is “actually still the best RTS story out there.” Elsewhere, the influence of Company of Heroes is clear. “When it comes to gameplay, or units, or UI, we looked at the other games, and looked at what worked, and picked and chose the best elements from all the games.”

For all the chaos of its bigger battles, Iron Harvest eventually comes across as a surprisingly cerebral RTS. King Art hasn’t been shy about the inspiration it’s taken from some of the genre’s biggest names, but as your armies clash and the battlefield shifts under the weight of your mechs, it’s clear that these lumbering machines aren’t the only thing that sets Iron Harvest apart.

 

[LESS T_T]

Took a page from DARQ developer's book I see:

 

[CyberModuled]

 

[Sloul]

The art direction is really top notch.

 

[laclongquan]

It does have some stunning similar Mech design to Ring of Red's. But maybe it's just the common thing in steampunk mecha or something~

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamesn.com/iron-harvest/rts-classic

Iron Harvest’s major innovation isn’t dieselpunk mechs, it’s traditionalism
The 1920+ dieselpunk RTS is staying close to its game design roots, and that feels really good

Real-time strategy never really went away, but it’s hard to deny that the genre has seen stronger days. Mention RTS in certain company, in fact, and the conversation will inevitably gravitate toward the late greats: Command & Conquer, StarCraft, Company of Heroes. The very innovations subsequent games used to try to carve out their own place in the RTS landscape seem to have diluted the genre beyond recognition – which may be why the time is ripe for a game like Iron Harvest.

Iron Harvest is instantly familiar, and not only to folks who have been following the work of artist Jakub Różalski, whose dieselpunk 1920+ scenes caught fire on social media several years ago and wound up inspiring the board game Scythe. It’s an RTS in the classic form – anyone who has touched a Company of Heroes or Men of War title will instantly feel right at home playing Iron Harvest. You command squads of soldiers who will magnetise themselves to bits of cover. It’s a game of territorial control, with maps divided into small sectors which players capture in order to hasten the acquisition of resources and expand their armies.

While Iron Harvest has come up with (as well as borrowed) a few of what someone might uncharitably describe as gimmicks, the foundation of the game is set solidly in established strengths: Company of Heroes worked brilliantly, so why not just do that again? With a few notable exceptions, that seems to be what King Art Games has done, and the result is surprisingly refreshing.

Tobias Stolz-Zwilling is a large man with a meticulously groomed red beard that’s visible from across the expo floor, and he’s handling PR for Iron Harvest. He walked me through a few select missions from the campaign at PAX East in Boston, and assured me that if I had played Company of Heroes, that I was well prepared for Iron Harvest. My squads scrambled across Polanian farmland, taking cover behind stone walls, in trenches, or among scrubby bushes. It’s a setting that feels most similar to the Russian fields of Company of Heroes 2, and might be hard to tell apart at a glance – if it weren’t for the towering dieselpunk mechs stomping around the battlefield.

“I like this one, here,” he says, pointing to a PZM-7 ‘Smialy,’ a relatively small Polonian recon mech that’s hefting a long rifle. “He is weak, but he’s extremely fast, so you can use them to outrun the opponent and try to quickly destroy the HQ. Once he levels up, he’s able to use his bayonet to slice open other mechs. Pretty cool.”

Cool indeed – I find that I can use my Smialy as an effective skirmisher when enemy armour shows up, running around to flank and getting off pot-shots while the bulkier mechs slowly wheel around to face me. But it can’t stay in one place for long: sustained fire from enemy mechs or crew-served weapons found on the battlefield can make short work of the Smialy’s light armour, and Tobias recommends I send it back for repairs.

There’s another whiff of Relic’s RTS design philosophy in the air as I tap the ‘R’ key – it’s a retreat command, and tapping it while you have any unit selected will instruct them to pull back and return to your HQ as quickly as possible. Once there, your squads can be filled out with reinforcements, and engineers can set to work welding your metal monsters back together. It’s always cheaper, Tobias hinted, to repair and reinforce rather than to recruit or build new units.

Spoiler

Mechs come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, and each has a unique but easily understandable role. The Saxons have the Wotan, which functions as the eight-legged version of a German StuG tank destroyer, while Polania’s apex mech is the Tur – a truly massive mobile artillery platform that looks as though the designers of the B-17 Flying Fortress had learned halfway through production that they were actually supposed to be making a gundam suit.

These mechs have an imposing but natural-feeling presence on the familiar battlefields of Iron Harvest – if they’re a gimmick, they don’t feel gimmicky. As I pushed out from my HQ to capture territories, I found my mechs could hold the line as I cycled infantry squads back and forth, telling the wounded to retreat and replenish and sending full units back out to the fight.

Iron Harvest’s single-player campaign, which Tobias says will comprise 21 missions that each take 45 minutes to an hour to complete, is filled out with an hour’s worth of fully motion-captured cutscenes. Each faction has unique hero units, such as Polania’s young leader Anna, a sniper who rides around on her pet bear Wojtek. In the story mission I played, Anna led a squad alongside a captured supply train through a snowy forest. I used her sniper ability to pick off soldiers manning crew-served weapons, and sent Wojtek bounding forward to sow chaos among enemy lines. As with the lumbering, massive mechs, Iron Harvest’s heroes blend seamlessly into the rest of the game experience, with a no muss, no fuss presentation that hews closely to the design of Company of Heroes and Dawn of War.



My hour with Iron Harvest left me looking forward to playing more. I didn’t get to see any of the Rusviet faction, the 1920+ corollary to Russia immediately prior to the February Revolution. I’m curious to see how the factions are balanced against each other, and how each one’s unique mechs fit into that puzzle. While the mechs are fun – and it’s a particular delight to see them smash through wooden structures that realistically crumble and splinter beneath their feet – I’m more drawn to Iron Harvest’s unfussy, lunch-bucket approach to RTS.

Tobias, on the other hand, enjoys some of the game’s more aesthetic touches.

“When you play the game and everything is exploding everywhere, I really feel like you can almost smell the burnt oil and stuff,” he says. “It makes you really feel powerful.” He’s right: you can, and it does.

Iron Harvest launches on Steam on September 1.

 

[Danikas]

Some gameplay from the campaign.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

Steam demo is out.

 

[Cnaiur]

They weren't kidding with the 'inspired by CoH'

 

[Alpharius]

Yeah, played some matches and it looks like seriously dumbed down coh2 so far, or rather dumbed down dow2. There is even steampunk terminator squad impervious to small arms fire.

Btw there is melee combat for infantry in the game but the mech with a giant bayonet can't into melee. Which is especially silly considering that this mech sucks against infantry, when it could have made such a glorious slaughter with the bayonet. Also no cavalry.

 

[Dayyālu]

The inbuilt problems (for me) of DoW2 MP were:

- retarded "merry-go-round" points capture;
- Retreat abuse;
- too many "clean-up" abilities

CoH2 was crappy compared to CoH1 due the entire commander retardation.

How does IH approach the fucking thing? Killing fantasy Poles could be good, but if it's stupid running around a post until someone unlocks a GG ability I won't even bother with the demo.

 

[Van-d-all]

CoH2 was crappy compared to CoH1 due the entire commander retardation.

CoH1 already started sucking when they added the fucking brits. Bullshit command aura blobbing, babysitting lieutenants and turdling buildings like it's Fortnite.

When IH eventually comes, I'll have to get a good look if any of those is present.