Developer: Dreadbit
Publisher: Ripstone
Rrp: £9.99 (Steam), £9.99 (Humblebundle)
Released: 26th March 2015
Available on Steam and Humblebundle
Played Using: Mouse and Keyboard
The year is 1886 and war rages between Britain and France over a new power source known as Voltite. The discovery has meant that the nature of war has changed, no longer do men face each other on a battlefield instead large steam driven automatons wage our wars. These mechanical bi-pedal behemoths became known as the Ironcast.
Ironcast is a match three game, WAIT! Don’t scroll past just yet, this is different, very different. Anyway, in Ironcast you play as a Commander in their own private Ironcast trying to defend Britain against a huge French invasion which will arrive in nine days.
Unlike traditional match three games you don’t swap tokens (called nodes in this game) around to make matches, instead you connect them together however you wish to create a chain, be that a straight line diagonally or a curve.
In this game you aren’t trying to achieve x amount of matches. No, in this you chain the nodes to provide you with precious materials that will can spend at any time.
Linking nodes not only fills up gauges but gives experience, the longer the node chain you make the more experience you get. But why make use of a huge chain when much of it will be wasted?
Now here’s the important bit, the combat is turn based, meaning you get to make your matches and then your opponent gets to make theirs. On your turn you can link chains of nodes in the node window to resupply your resources (more on that in a moment), repair any damaged systems, use any special abilities and perform actions. Depending on what action you choose to perform a certain amount of energy and coolant will be used, although attacks don’t use any energy. You can perform any number of these actions you wish as long as you have the resources to allow for it.
Above the node window there will be a number, this is how many node chains you can create before you have to perform your actions. Actions are preformed in the upper portion of the screen, here you can choose to fire on the enemy with weapons (of which there are two types), raise defences or move. You can also repair any damaged systems at this time.
Each node represents a resource (with two exceptions), purple nodes replenish ammunition. Orange provides the energy to power your systems. Blue is engine coolant which as it sounds keeps your system cool, if you run out the overheated systems cause damage. Green allows you to repair any damage your systems may take. Yellow gives bonus scrap which gives you material to allow you to upgrade your Ironcast in the workshop. White allows you to provide a one time bonus to the next system you activate and red is the link node which allows you to link two nodes of different types together.
You’d think that match three turn based combat would be easy wouldn’t you? Well its not, the concept is certainly but I swear you never get what you need when you need it. The coolant node never seems to drop when you need it most, or your energy reserves are almost always dry. In one game I was swamped with repair nodes when all I needed was some ammunition! There are Ironcast abilities you can use to mitigate this problem but those particular abilities just never seemed to appear for me.
Any enemies you defeat will give you blueprints which become upgrades that will be available for your Ironcast. These upgrades can be bought and equipped when you are in the hanger and cost scrap that is gained through killing enemies, completing missions and as bonuses.
After each mission you will return to the hanger, its here you can make repairs, upgrade your Ironcast and select your next mission (each mission taking up a day). These missions are selected from a random set each play through so its unlikely you will get the same missions twice in a row.
The rewards you’ll receive for completing each mission is shown on the mission selection screen. As we already know these missions will give scrap and experience but some of them also grant another reward, war assets. War assets are used to make the incoming French invasion easier, the more you have the better you are likely to do. Thing is, missions with War Assets tend to give less scrap and experience than others.
The experience you gain through creating chains of nodes, killing enemies and completing missions will eventually level you up. Levelling up give a maximum health increase as well as allows you to choose a passive augmentation or a new ability.
If you get defeated in combat then its game over… except it isn’t. All the experience you have gathered gets put toward the ‘global unlock progress’. Every time this goes up a level something unlocks for you.
Get it, if you like match three, get it if you like mechs, get it if you like steampunk! I loved this game, even if it infuriated me at times. It’s clear that a lot of thought went into how the match three mechanic was implemented. Honestly I’ve played many triple A titles that are much much worse.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
HuniePop
PuzzleQuest
ReignMaker
