16 Dec 2020Developer post

Update 1.03.02 now available!

Hi all, We are happy to provide you with a major update, so if you have had Iron Danger gathering dust in your library, now it’s great time to start playing! The full patch notes can be found at the end of this post. One of the main goals with the update has been fixing a big num

Hi all,

We are happy to provide you with a major update, so if you have had Iron Danger gathering dust in your library, now it’s great time to start playing!

The full patch notes can be found at the end of this post.

One of the main goals with the update has been fixing a big number of rewinding related issues that could’ve caused some things to not work correctly after rewinding on specific spots. These issueshave mostly been about enemies acting incorrectly, but in some cases they could have caused some levels to not be able to be completed without restarting them.

Another important aspect has been to make the game a bit easier. We started this with some balancing in early levels of the game and improving the gameplay mechanics tutorial.

We want to also thank all of you in our community for such great support and feedback during this year. Have a great rest of the year and enjoyable seasonal celebrations! Stay safe and healthy!

Iron Danger 1.03.02 release notes:

Features:
- Added new tutorial elements in the tutorial level that better indicate the correct timing for evades and blocks by highlighting the timeline position player should rewind to

Fixes:
- Fixed panicking AI not acting correctly if it couldn't instantly find suitable position to run into
- Fixed AI corpse investigation logic when re-discovering dead body
- Fixed AI perceptions not updating correctly with moving perception targets
- Fixed multiple doors (like Fireweed hatch) opening on its own after rewinds
- Fixed backup not arriving in Logjam level if game was rewound after doing damage to the dam
- Fixed picking up barrels through walls in some spots
- About a hundred small trigger fixes that could have caused issues on rewinds in different levels
- Fixed some issues with Keyus not rising up correctly from grounds in rewinds
- Fixed potential culling issue with Spike Traps
- Fixed Grouse's destructible nest not working correctly when rewinding after hitting it once
- Fixed an issue where some Possessed Automatons didn't show correct examination text
- Removed some broken examinable stuff where the examination text couldn't be found
- Fixed some issues with chopping down Creep Trees not working correctly
- Fixed Wait action having a cooldown on Hard mode, preventing chaining it
- Fixed tooltips showing invalid cooldown times (rounding error)
- Fixed tooltips showing invalid duration of many actions, especially in Hard mode
- Fixed level results screen upgrade details showing some wrong cooldown and speed values in Hard mode

Balance changes:
Level 1-2
- Removed one engineer from inside the castle
- Removed one engineer from top of the stairs
- Removed one engineer from the marketplace
Level 1-4
- Removed flanking bandit from the first combat
- Removed one bandit from campfire, leaving only 3
- Removed crossbow from a bandit at the campfire
- Made all bandits have 50hp
Level 2-3
- Removed one Keyu Master from the falling tree ambush
Level 2-4
- Removed one shaman from the last room, leaving only one
Level 2-5
- Removed one guard from the fight before Aurolith
- Made enemies have little less HP as player characters are weaker in this level.

General:
- Cleave action takes 3 heartbeats instead of 2 in Hard mode

Original post

22 Jun 2020Developer post

New Kipuna Skin!

Today we can announce, that our promise of adding a wonderful alternative outfit for Kipuna to the Supporter Pack, has been fullfilled. This glamorous Armor is exclusive for everyone who already bought or will buy the Supporter Pack or Supporter Bundle in the future. Not a suppor

25 Mar 2020Developer post

Iron Danger releases now!

We, Action Squad Studio and Daedalic Entertainment, are proud to be able to say - We are releasing Iron Danger, the tactical RPG with simultaneous turns and time manipulation, on Steam - Right Now! Enter a war-torn world of magic and machinery that draws from Nordic mythology, st

18 Mar 2020Developer post

Only a week until the release!

It is only week until the release which is extremely exciting times for us devs. This also means that some of the review videos about the game are already coming out. We are also very happy that most of those videos have been positive, which always makes a little dev very happy.

25 Feb 2020Developer post

Come and play Iron Danger in PAX East

These are truly exciting times. There is only one month left until the release of the Iron Danger. We are so excited, and we truly wish that you are as well! There is still one more chance to get to try Iron Danger hands on before the release. Iron Danger will be playable in PAX

30 Jan 2020Developer post

Release Date Announcement

Heyho Everyone, we are delighted to announce that the innovative time-manipulating tactical RPG Iron Danger will launch on Steam on March 25th. The new gameplay trailer showcases our unique time manipulation mechanics: Iron Danger transports players to a war-torn world inspired b

24 Jan 2020Developer post

So what genre Iron Danger belongs to?

One of the interesting challenges with Iron Danger is that it is often very hard to put game with so unique game mechanics into specific genre or category. We have been telling to people that it is pretty much tactical RPG, but on the other hand it is very streamlined experienced

17 Jan 2020Developer post

PAX South 2020 - The Year of Iron

Hi all! The Year of Iron is here, with release of the Iron Danger sneaking just behind the nearby corner. And the Year of Iron is really kicked into start during this weekend at San Antonio, where you can try out our exhibition demo of Iron Danger at Pax South. You can find us fr

13 Dec 2019Developer post

Closed beta testing

Exciting news! We have decided to run a closed beta testing still during this year. We will take in limited amount of interested people to test the game and to give their feedback. Few summarized facts about testing: The game is close to be finished (all features and content are

02 Dec 2019Developer post

Devblog: What's going on?

Woah, it has been some time since last post! After miserably failing our once per week – cycle, let’s try to get back to track. It is nice to see you reminding us of that and asking for more. :) This time it’s more progress report kind of thing. The main reason why we haven’t bee

30 Sep 2019Developer post

Devblog: Time to Freeze

Time to look something more specific about the gameplay this week. During the journey, characters may learn variety of new skills. One of those things is ice magic. Even though ice magic is not as powerful for direct damage as for example fire magic, it is very versatile and dead

13 Sep 2019Developer post

Devblog: Skills and more skills

One of the major things we’ve been working lately is to polish character skills, add some new skills and rework on our skill upgrade mechanics. Let’s take a look at main things on that work. GAINING NEW SKILLS When adventuring in the world of Iron Danger, our playable characters

One of the major things we’ve been working lately is to polish character skills, add some new skills and rework on our skill upgrade mechanics.
Let’s take a look at main things on that work.

GAINING NEW SKILLS

When adventuring in the world of Iron Danger, our playable characters will be gaining new skills on constant pace. As part of minimizing grinding, we have removed experience points and character levels and instead will be giving skills as part of story progress.

Originally we fleshed out a system in which each level will have special focus goal, which was sort of competition between your two characters. On most simple form it could’ve been number of enemies killed by Kipuna versus number of enemies killed by Lemichen. Based on this condition, one of the characters would then receive skill upgrade.

However, more we played with those conditions the more we got into impression that it is not as much fun as we expected and could easily lead into non-balanced character development. Therefore we started to rework on it. Now the system is actually more straight-forward. After each of so called adventure-level, some of the characters will gain new skill upgrade. The skill upgrade can be selected from the pool of available upgrades for that specific character and picking a skill, might add new upgrades to the pool for future. This actually feels really good, because we can have steady supply of upgrades going on and constantly giving something fresh to try out.

There was initial downside with this as well. Now that we get skills more often, we were running out of the skills, so we needed to start working on adding some new skills. This was some unplanned extra work for us, but just plain happy bonus for the players.

REWORKING SKILLS AND ADDING NEW ONES

Big part of working on skill progress upgrades was to go through all the existing skills and see that their possible upgrades are rewarding enough to receive. As they’ve been added during long time, there actually were also many skills of which upgrade felt worse than original skill. We had 49 character skills for our main characters (this excludes skills like throwing grenades etc and some special characters without skill progression of their own). Tons of modifications were made for those skills, smallest one being some description or skill name changes and with the biggest ones being changing nearly all the functionality of the skill. We also added 12 new skills, so the total number of combined skills of all main characters is now 61, which should be plenty enough. About half of the skills are on the pool of our main protagonist Kipuna, and the rest is split quite evenly between two other main characters.

Initial feeling of the progress and skill changes is very positive. We are currently doing some heavy in-house play testing and will be wiser after that to see if things turned up as good as we wanted or if some work on skills is still required.

Original post

30 Aug 2019Developer post

Gamescom conquered, now it's time for Pax West!

Gamescom conquered Gamescom, the biggest consumer event in gaming industry, and we survived through it! As mentioned earlier, we had own booth at Gamescom as well as had pile of press meetings booked. During the three days of press meetings, we showed the game to over 200 journal

19 Aug 2019Developer post

Play Iron Danger at Gamescom 2019!

Exciting news for those who will be participating Gamescom 2019 this week. You can get to play Iron Danger demo in our booth! So, don't miss the big and shiny main attraction of the whole show, and head to our booth in Indie Village (Hall 10.2) E-038a. .. oh and most brave and da

16 Aug 2019Developer post

Devblog: Water water, let it flow

This time we have more development techniques oriented post. Written by our lead designer Jussi. But it still includes some nice result screenshots for others as well! Gushing water. that is where it’s been at this week! We are redoing some of the levels from the game that we fee

This time we have more development techniques oriented post. Written by our lead designer Jussi. But it still includes some nice result screenshots for others as well!

Gushing water. that is where it’s been at this week!

We are redoing some of the levels from the game that we feel have not been up to par with our current understanding of fun game-play. And this week it was the turn for our dreaded underwater temple to go! We saved some of the super complicated trigger work, but about 150% of the level content was scrapped and redone from scratch. This sort of total overhaul has been done to a bunch of our level content in the last month or so.

But back to the topic. As we were redoing the water temple. I got super exited to add a bunch of gushing pipes and whatnot to the level. And they need gushing water, so this is how we went about creating that effect!

ELEMENT 1: THE SHAPE OF THE WATER

In this example I’ll be showcasing a simple water faucet type of effect, so the water shape is simply a cylinder. It is actually 2 cylinders inside each other.

The inner cylinder is an animated material with gradual alpha cutoff value going to the bottom. When we are animating the diffuse channel UV the image never clips at the bottom as it is faded out. This is representing the foams and air gushing within the water.

The outer cylinder is the water surface. This is rendered transparent in play mode (when the game is running) with animated normals and distortions. This represent the surface of the water and will be hidden once it intersects with other waters, creating an unified water surface.

ELEMENT 2: THE SURFACE COLLISION

The surface impact is split into 2 parts: particles that spawn on collision (I will explain that bit in the next chapter) and a mesh and some particles that are placed on the surface by hand.

The manually placed assets are a particle emitter just spewing out water splashes and a similarly animated alpha-cutoff shader as with the inner cylinder. but instead of being a cylinder, it is an outwards expanding disk. Allowing us to animate the foam spreading out from the impact point.

ELEMENT 3: THE PARTICLES

One master particle system is in charge of creating the base for all of the particles. Once this system collides with a water surface (or floor) we spawn slow dispersing steam particles and distortion rings that add life to the surface that is being impacted on.

THE RESULT

When combined, these elements create a nice gushing water effect that can be used with pretty much any shape we wish.
I am also a fan of the internal cylinder with the foam texture being visible under other water surfaces all alone, as it gives an impression of violent current churning in the deep.

Original post

09 Aug 2019Developer post

Devblog: Back from vacation!

The whole team has now returned from well earned summer vacation and all ready to rumble again! The focus has been quite a lot in some play-through testing, to ensure that all the things are working together as we want to. So, in practice it means playing the game by ourselves (l

The whole team has now returned from well earned summer vacation and all ready to rumble again!

The focus has been quite a lot in some play-through testing, to ensure that all the things are working together as we want to. So, in practice it means playing the game by ourselves (lucky us!).

However, here are some of the things that are in-progress and has happened during the vacation.

COMMUNITY REWARDS

Our opinion has always been that the road to success is built together with our community, and therefore we had special reward program running at our Discord server. Some of the main rewards that we had were to get your own look-a-like NPC to the game. Even though it is very early WIP, we can now proudly show you that we have really started the work with one of our lucky community member’s reward. In future he will be able to dive into game and slay bandit boss that looks very much like him!

Here you can see sneak peek on early phase of workflow. Just looking the shapes from photo and starting to carve in the real facial features to suit the overall game visuals.

https://youtu.be/lhM0gtfrJfQ

You are most than welcome to join us at Discord. Even though we currently have no open community rewards program going on, we are really interested to have chat of all of you! And you never know if something still comes up when we get closer to release!

PRESENTATIONS

We are such a strange creatures that we rarely stay out of our work, even during the vacation. There were some nice events this summer, where we were invited to talk about Iron Danger and of course we went.

First event was Illusion 2019 at Joensuu, where Sami and HP went to discuss about development experiences and learnings of developing something such unique as Iron Danger is. It was really nice event with good atmosphere!

In the beginning of August, HP had interview type Q&A session at Assembly 2019 ArtTech seminar. That session is also available in depths of interwebs, so if you are eager to learn something more about Iron Danger and us, jump in to take a look!

https://youtu.be/32ZOy0opAQs

Original post

Iron Danger

Updates & announcements

Edge of War (CRPG) is out now on Early Access

Update 1.03.02 now available!

The Steam Awards - Vote Now!

New Kipuna Skin!

First major patch now available. Also: Free Demo out now!

Iron Danger releases now!

Only a week until the release!

Come and play Iron Danger in PAX East

Release Date Announcement

So what genre Iron Danger belongs to?

PAX South 2020 - The Year of Iron

Closed beta testing

Devblog: What's going on?

We tease you with new trailer!

Devblog: Time to Freeze

Devblog: Skills and more skills

GAINING NEW SKILLS

REWORKING SKILLS AND ADDING NEW ONES

Gamescom conquered, now it's time for Pax West!

Gamescom conquered

Beware Pax West, Action Squad is coming to house!

Play Iron Danger at Gamescom 2019!

Devblog: Water water, let it flow

ELEMENT 1: THE SHAPE OF THE WATER

ELEMENT 2: THE SURFACE COLLISION

ELEMENT 3: THE PARTICLES

THE RESULT

Devblog: Back from vacation!

COMMUNITY REWARDS

PRESENTATIONS