IRON NEST: Heavy Turret Simulator

Iron Nest has an interesting concept. The game revolves around triangulation - essentially very basic geometry using coordinates and information from spotters/intelligence to work out where to aim your cannon. It's a neat mechanic at first, and figuring it out during the first couple of missions is actually quite satisfying. The problem is that you nail the mechanic after about two missions… and that's basically 95% of the game. The core gameplay loop is: Get coordinates/intel → do some basic triangulation → dial the numbers into the machine → load the cannon → fire → repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat... It's a good mechanic, but it isn't enough to carry an entire game on its own. I kept waiting for the game to introduce something else, but unfortunately, very little comes along to expand on that initial idea. Another major annoyance for me is how the entire game takes place inside the walking turret. As a concept, that's fine and it could have been really cool if the environment had been properly developed around it. But given how limited the world already is, some of the environmental design feels downright lazy. For example, when you raise the turret elevation, parts of the machinery simply clip straight through the ceiling. In a game where essentially the entire experience is built around one relatively small environment, you'd expect considerably more attention to detail and refinement. It's difficult not to look at things like that and think the developers could have spent more time polishing the world their entire game takes place in. The time-trial missions are where the clunky controls become particularly frustrating. They basically turn into: Run over there → pull lever → run back → spin wheel → run over there → pull five more levers → run somewhere else → repeat. Again, if this were mixed up with other gameplay mechanics, it might be fine. But because you're already doing essentially the same triangulation/cannon routine throughout the rest of the game, these missions just feel like another repetitive layer on top of an already repetitive gameplay loop. I honestly think the game would have benefited enormously from having a crew that you could recruit, manage and level up. Give different crew members different skills, let them operate parts of the turret, introduce meaningful decisions about who does what; maybe add close quarter encounters, add a periscope so you can see the surrounding environment and issue orders to the crew to fire tactical/close range weapons; add machinery modifications to work around different builds (to justify those sandbox missions); and suddenly the whole concept has another layer of strategy and replayability. And finally, a huge number of the "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews appear to come from people with only a handful of hours played. Having spent some time with the game myself, I can understand why: there is a fun idea here, but there just isn't much of a game beyond it. For me, this was essentially a 2-hour experience. Once you've figured out the triangulation mechanic and seen the basic mission structure, you've pretty much seen what the game has to offer. Iron Nest isn't a bad game. It has a good idea at its core. It just desperately needed more ideas around that core. Unfortunately, for me, there's not enough here to recommend it. Thumbs Down.

Disappointed. I wanted to love this after playing the demo, but I can't. 1. The tasks you complete during gameplay quickly become tedious and boring. 2. You can earn medals after completing certain sub-objectives in each mission, but they do nothing other than achievements, so anything less than a gold medal doesn't count. 3. The location of friendly and hostile units on the map is somewhat random, which can make earning medals impossible due to factors completely outside your control. After playing the full version of this game, I felt tired and done, rather than engaged. That's not how I should feel in a game with such an awesome concept.

I feel bad giving this a negative review but I thought I'd give a counter-note to the overwhelmingly positive reviews. Iron Nest is a well-made game with a great concept that for a certain type of person will be incredible fun, but I'm just not that person. The loading/firing process was super cool at first but I got sick of sloooowly cranking the gun into position pretty quickly. Targeting was a fun puzzle initially but once you understand how to find and triangulate the target you've pretty much "solved" the game. From there it's just rote task repetition. Your shooting has "impact" in the sense that there is a narrative and you get little kill icons, but it has no impact I could discern on how the game unfolds. Basically each level is just a puzzle- find where the targets are, hit them, get a score and a little after-action report, move to the next level. Again, for a certain demographic this game will be incredible. Try the demo before you buy the game.

Pretty buggy. The counter battery mission kept failing immediately after the additional artillery units spawn.