I hesitated the first time I saw Ironcast, the Steampunk mech game from Dreadbit.
This was because the “Match 3” format is largely beaten to death in today’s gaming landscape. Commuting to NYC daily, I see dozens of people on their cell phones Candy Crushing with dead expressions on their face. The games are usually about that level of fun, played more as a way to feel good about lazily watching numbers increase than actually playing anything.
Minutes into Ironcast, I could already see that I had judged all too quickly. Yes, the game uses a match grid to keep the action going, but there are so many more moving parts than just “make good combinations, win the game.” The game draws upon so many different genres that it becomes a new beast of its own: mech dogfighting sims, rogue-likes, match puzzlers, turn-based strategy and resource management.
The game opens with a fictional war between France and England over a fictional resource that has rapidly caused rifts between the countries. The two utilize it to build “Ironcasts,” walking tanks intended for war, and the two start to duke it out. Really, the story is secondary to the gameplay, but it sets up the atmosphere for the rest of the game quite nicely.
Players pick a starting character who has a built-in ability. Then, you select a loadout for your starting weapons. Death is permanent in the game, but by playing it over and over, one can rake in permanent experience points the more times you play through – unlocking additional characters and loadouts.
Action is turn-based. Battles are done one on one against a variety of different styles of Ironcasts, all of which excel at different things. You are presented with a resource grid where you have to draw connecting lines for similar tiles to clear them off the board. Everything you’ll need to manage – ammunition, energy, coolant and repair nodes – are presented to help power up your Ironcast for battle. While you can keep firing shots with your weapons or ramp up your shields as long as you have resources, you are only allowed a limited number of turns for resource gathering. Once you’ve gathered and fired and powered your Ironcast, it’s time to click “Done” and hope the enemy doesn’t completely obliterate you.
This game is simple enough that I picked up on most of the basics very quickly. But as my character leveled up, I realized there was far more strategy to this game than I had previously thought. Everything from the missions you select, to how you handle missions, to which skills you select for your characters all help to form an odd but charming mech-battle game that pulls from a ridiculous number of genres.
Weirdly enough, I’m not sure I could recommend this to someone who just chains Match 3 games until they’re out of turns. The game has a little more complexity to it than I think that crowd is generally looking for. I’d strongly recommend this game for lovers of rogue-likes, games with a ton of unlockables, and games where you watch numbers increase while blowing things up.
4/5
