War is a fairly common setting for video games. It’s one of the easiest ways to set up a conflict for both the story and gameplay to function. The one caveat is that you have to be on the front lines for it to work. Whether the game takes place in a historic setting, fantastical ones, or a mix of both, you have to be in the middle of the action. Iron Nest proudly rejects this premise.
As the operator of the Iron Nest (the game’s namesake), you’re put in the role of wielding the monarchy’s strongest weapon to both incite and stifle conflict. Set in an alternate dieselpunk world from the early 20th century, you live inside the war machine and execute the orders received from High Command. The easiest way to describe the game’s premise is to imagine a mix of strategic war games with the “coziness” of the simulator genre. Just, of course, slightly less focused on doing things at your own pace.
The core of the game is almost like an open-ended puzzle. No guided tutorial exists, only a machine typing out your orders and several clipboards scattered around to explain what each contraption does. You then collect data points to paste them into your own personal clipboard and get to planning on your tactical map. Triangulating the information given by spotters, marking points of interest, calculating distance and bearing, and only then actually loading and preparing to fire.
It doesn’t take long until the “war” side of the gameplay starts changing the flow of a mission. Planning all your shots is an easy enough task to be done repeatedly, but what if you’re being targeted in the meantime? What if the intel is wrong? What if the machine breaks? Each step of the process isn’t really complicated, but organizing them efficiently is. The game does every calculation necessary for you, but you’re expected to quickly interpret and act upon them.
Thematically, Iron Nest is closer to a satire than it is to a gritty war story. All of the game’s plot relies on orders from the high command and the newspapers that follow after every successful mission. From the same veins as Helldivers, the oppressive regime and the ensuing war are just background noise to dictate gameplay mechanics and aesthetic. Of course, there aren’t many ways an elaborate narrative could be delivered while being locked inside a walking artillery piece. Therefore, it works in the game’s favor that the story aspect is kept to a minimum. The core of the experience is in the role-playing.
The demo still keeps a lot of the cards close to its chest. There are tons of possibilities in how missions can further evolve, but so far, only the first three missions are available to give a taste of what to expect. You can find a couple of (as of yet) unused mechanics, such as gas masks and an engine room, but they aren’t required in the first hours of the game. Every mission has its own accolades to earn (such as “fewest shots taken”), and you can compete in the leaderboards for the best score on endless levels.
About the only thing that feels slightly off is some of the visuals. While the background machinery is beautifully animated and perfect at conveying the massive scale of what you’re doing, some pieces can break the illusion from time to time. Iron Nest is a stable game overall, but glitches still occur regardless. All of these issues can be ironed out (no pun intended) on the road to release, but it is a rather small team tackling an ambitious project. It’s something worth keeping in mind.
If nothing else, this is a game that fills a very specific niche. It has an idea and a laser focus to see it come to fruition. The demo for Iron Nest is available now on Steam. The full game is slated for release on August 6, with console ports coming at a later date.
