Iron Danger puts a time-bending spin on RPG tactics
It's like Braid, but...
After a whole new generation of Infinity Engine-inspired RPGs (ala Pillars of Eternity), we're familiar enough with the concept of real-time-with-pause combat, but upcoming tactical RPG Iron Danger looks to go one step further... or back, depending on how you look at it. How does the option to roll back time and undo all your mistakes sound? Welcome to Savescumming: The Game.
Set in a world based on Finnish mythology (specifically the 19th century epic, Kalevala), Iron Danger primarily puts you in the shoes of Kipuna, a regular young woman. Somehow, she's gone and stumbled upon an ancient power which gives her control over time and death itself, as you do, and understandably there are forces out there who'd quite like to have that. Cue a magical cat-and-mouse journey across the land, with you almost always outnumbered, but never short on time. Here's some early (and clearly unoptimised) pre-alpha gameplay footage:
Kipuna isn't entirely alone on her journey - the trailer shows her partnering up with an enormous axeman, and there's a third playable character in the works - but the focus of the game being time manipulation means that developers Action Squad Studios are going to have their work cut out for them coming up with combat encounters that leverage your ability to rewind time without being horribly frustrating. It's a great concept on paper, but it's going to require a lot of clever design to make it sing.
Oddly, it seems that Iron Danger might be a repurposed film property, heavily reworked. While the game we see above seems fairly swords-and-sorcery in nature, a proof-of-concept trailer for the film of the same name from 2015 features WW2 weaponry and giant mecha-bears. However, the link to the Iron Danger site in the trailer description now leads solely to the games's page, although there is a tie-in comic series planned.
There's no release date for the game itself, but the Iron Danger comic series is due to release its first chapter some time this year. In the meantime, you can follow development of it via the game's site (which includes a newsletter to sign up for), as well as the developer's Twitter feed.