Ironfront Express Steam Demo Review
Verdict: Play
Ironfront Express is a Bullet Hell tower defence roguelike where you are the train, and every layer of the game keeps ru
Ironfront Express is a Tower Defense Roguelike from Chemical Burn where you play as a heavily armoured train fighting off three lanes of corrupted robots. It layers Bullet Hell swarm density on top of the placement puzzle underneath, and asks you to work both while managing energy, aim, and the train's position on the track. Two and a half hours into the demo I never once reached for the two-times speed button, and my verdict is a play.
My verdict is a play. Two and a half hours were on the clock when I stopped, and I know I am going back for that final boss. There is no one layer of the game you can settle into. You are working turret placement, energy costs, the ground-air toggle on your own gun, and the train moving up and down the track all at once.
Pros
- The scrap-and-energy economy that teaches you by punishing: five machine gun turrets in a row drift from eighty scrap and ten energy to closer to fifty energy per placement, and every ability you fire pulls from the same pool your turrets already ate
- Layered chaos that runs every system at once (turret placement, the F-key ground-air toggle on your own manual gun, active abilities, and physically moving the train up and down the track) so no run gives you a moment to autopilot
- Node-graph mission variety keeps runs from feeling like the same wave twice, with survive-five-waves, siphon-telemetry, and corrupted-robot harpoon missions each playing differently
- First tower defence demo I have reviewed where I never once touched the two-times speed button
You are the train
You are the train, running along the bottom of the map, and three lanes stretch away into wherever the enemies come from. Each carriage holds weapons. Some are active guns you fire yourself, and some are turret modules you drop in the lanes ahead as static defence.
Anything that gets past chews through your shield first, then your health. That is the surface layer, and it works as a Tower Defense with Bullet Hell density stacked on top.
Scrap and energy
The turrets have two costs stacked on each other. Scrap is the surface number and energy is the punishment underneath. Five machine gun turrets in a row might start at eighty scrap and ten energy, but by the fifth it is still eighty scrap and closer to fifty energy per placement. Once your capacitor caps out you cannot build another of that turret.
Energy also fuels your active abilities. Every drone drop, rocket barrage, and mortar rocket that lights the ground pulls from the same pool the turrets already ate. As a Strategy game this is where the depth is. My first serious build was turret-heavy and my abilities went dormant halfway through because the capacitor never refilled. My next attempt was modules only, and the ability menu never got a look because I never had a hand free to open it.
Mission types and the node graph
Each Roguelike run cycles a node graph of mission types: survive five waves, park at platforms and siphon telemetry while shuffling the train up and down, or hunt down corrupted robots. The mission that ended my first run was the corrupted-robot mission. You get a harpoon that fires on a five-second delay, so between aiming and the shot landing, robots keep running at you.
Friendlies are white and blue, corrupted ones are red, and you have to pick out the red before the harpoon lands. I did not read the instructions the first time. I was in panic mode from the maps before, every enemy on the map looked like a threat, and I was firing at whatever was closest. Too many friendlies took harpoons and the run ended. Second time round I read the instructions first, and it became a timing puzzle instead of a panic reflex.
At the end of every mission you pick a reward from a few options and get a cash payout to spend in the shop. There are random encounters between missions too. The shop buy that matters is more carriages, because each new one opens its own slot config: two weapons, a weapon plus an upgrade module, or modules only. Longer train means more of you in the fight. Between runs there is a small talent tree where you spend points on things like train health and shield. As a Strategy game this is where the second layer of decision-making lives. After the harpoon-failure run every point I had went into raw stats, because the next Roguelike run is going to hand you random starting weapons and modules anyway. I made it to the final boss once and it destroyed me. There is plenty of demo left to try again with a full talent tree behind me.
The two-times speed button
It looks simplistic and the look does the job. Battle feedback lands, hits register, drones flit between lanes, the ground catches fire from the mortar.
Here is the tell. This is the first Tower Defense I have reviewed where I never once reached for the two-times speed button. On every other TD demo, half of it ends up at two-times. The Bullet Hell density on top of the placement layer already had enough going on that speeding time up would have broken me.
Game Info
- Developer
- Chemical Burn
- Publisher
- Monster Theater
- Full release
- TBC
- Platform
- PC, Mac, Linux
- Multiplayer
- No
- Controller
- No
- Playtime
- 2h 30min
Watch the video review: YouTube
Tags: Roguelike, Bullet Hell, Strategy, Indie, Tower Defense, PvE, Base Builder, Action
Related Reviews
- Void Reaver: Bullet heaven where your backpack is the build, and Tetris in the shop is half the fun.
- Castillon: A bite-sized medieval fantasy of build-by-day, defend-by-night that's part strategy, part Tower Defense, part city build
- NO ENTRY: OUR BURROW: Cute animals, rubber ducks, and a linking system that sets it apart from the tower defense crowd.
- Fangstorm: A first-person wave defense game where goblins ignore your carefully placed traps because you forgot there are three rou
- Dawn Of Defense: Viking Tower Defense where you hold trench lines and push RTS island captures on the same run, and the land you hold ban
- UnderDark: Defense: UnderDark: Defense has a solid core buried under an unfinished mobile port.