Fantasy scenario, tactical battles – that's how we know role-playing games. But in Iron Danger we also manipulate time! A few months have passed since our last ecstatic look at Gamescom. An early playable version is now finally available.
At first glance, Iron Danger is a classic role-playing game set in a fantasy scenario shaped by Nordic mythology and other influences. As befits a story like this, disaster is on the way: a nasty witch queen from the north seeks revenge and threatens the entire country. You take on the role of the young girl named Kipuna, who one day is pierced by a mysterious crystal shard. What sounds very martial at first, however, has a positive side: the crystal gives it the ability to manipulate time to a certain extent. This also results in one of the central gameplay elements, which we will discuss in more detail shortly.
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To summarize briefly: Kipuna sets off to avert the impending danger, encounters numerous monsters and other adversities and has to prove herself as a heroine. Despite the well-known knitting pattern for adventure and role-playing games, the story of Iron Danger has so far been quite pleasing, especially due to the different companions and their peculiarities.
Playing with time
Instead of traveling through the fantasy world with a large group of adventurers, the small Kipuna is content with a maximum of one companion. However, this changes in the course of the story, so that you are sometimes with an archer, sometimes with a scary fighter. However, the main focus is clearly on the aspect of time manipulation. As soon as you encounter opponents, the gameplay switches to combat mode. It presents itself as a mixture of Superhot, X-COM and a little pinch of Jagged Alliance. You can pause the action at any time to calmly plan the next steps.
It should always be noted that some actions take more time than others. A simple swing with the melee weapon is much faster than firing an arrow. After all, you must first put on the bow and stretch the tendon before the shot is fired. If the timing of such actions does not fit, the previously targeted opponent suddenly stands right in front of you and pulls his stick over you.
This is where one of the most interesting and attractive features of Iron Danger comes into play. As already mentioned, Kipuna can manipulate time. As soon as you are in combat, two bars will appear at the bottom of the screen – one for each character of your adventurer duo. All actions of the last ten heartbeats can be seen on it. Yes, you read it correctly: the actions and thus the passage of time are divided into heartbeats. You can travel back in time up to a maximum of ten heartbeats at the push of a button. This way, you can simply undo a flawed attack, failed defense, or other mishaps to be more skillful the next time you try.
Iron Danger takes place in a world shaped by Northern European mythology, steampunk and tech noir that threatens to be torn to pieces by a war.
This is exactly what Iron Danger has to offer: Due to the pause function and the time manipulation, the fights don't feel like classic RPG skirmishes, but more like a multi-part puzzle that has to be solved as elegantly as possible. For example, if you run around a corner and thus in the middle of an opponent group, you simply rewind the time and now plan an ambush to eliminate the opponents.
Since the game world can be largely destroyed or at least manipulated, a variety of approaches open up for you. For example, if your opponents are in tall grass, it might be worth setting them on fire. It is even possible to cut down trees and drop them on enemies in order to eliminate larger groups at once. Of course, all of this requires a lot of planning, so you will use the "rewind button" extremely often. There is always something to improve to make a fight more effective.
