LifeIron Wants To Hack And Slash At The Action RPG

Diablo 3's originally planned runestone system seemed like one of the game's most exciting features: for any skill, you'd be able to socket in a rune which would dramatically change that skill's purpose. Plugging a particular rune into your plague of toads skill, for example, might have instead spawned a single giant toad who would eat your enemies, or cause toads to fall from the sky like it's a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. It seemed like a tinkerer's delight, and when that system was streamlined pre-release, I'm not sure my excitement for the game ever really recovered.

LifeIron is an indie action-RPG which, according to this email here, promises to fix what its designers "perceive as genre-wide mistakes in game mechanic design." Which mechanics? "Character building and tweaking," of course. Trailer and ambition below.

Warning: trailer contains a record scratch joke.

As the LifeIron site acknowledges, making a game like this is a complicated project for just two people. Inevitably, they're planning on launching a Kickstarter soon so they can bring on someone to help with sound and music and so its two current creators can work on the game full-time.

From the trailer, I'd say it's a long way from offering the punchy combat necessary to make all your tinkering worthwhile, but I like the cut of their jib if not yet the cut of their gibs. One to watch.