After a few months of work, I’d like to publicly unveil my hack Iron Emblem: Age of Steel. It is a successor to my hack I released last year, Iron Emblem. If you don’t know anything about Iron Emblem, I’ll explain.
Iron Emblem: Age of Steel is a game that is designed around the true ironman playstyle; that is, never resetting a chapter, and the save file being lost once a game over happens. Every single unit in the game is a generic unit, with very little to distinguish them as individuals, being mostly identical to enemy units. This game’s framework regarding stats in particular was heavily inspired by FE: Fates. However, there are no skills in this game.
This game will contain 22 chapters, with a 7 chapter route split to encourage replayability. The challenge this time is to make it through the entire game without losing, and perhaps going for another run, changing up promotions and the route you take.
Playing the original Iron Emblem is in no way required to play this game or understand its story as it’s a very barebones experience with no prior knowledge necessary, so don’t let that dissuade you. However, the game is meant to appeal to the same sensibilities, so if you didn’t like the first game, not much will change here. I’ve also put in a few extremely minor nods to the first game, but don’t worry about those.
The story in Iron Emblem: Age of Steel revolves around a commander of a small group who lives in the northern region of the Omnes Empire, and their quest to restore balance to the Empire as chaos breaks loose, with no indication of what’s causing it…
Features
A full length 22 chapter campaign, complete with a 7 chapter routesplit and multiple endings, and in addition, 4 base-styled shopping chapters
Branched promotions that apply to most classes, though not all. You may recognize many of these classes from FE: Fates
59 playable units in total across both routes
Units sending their items to the convoy upon death
Two new weapon types in guns and hidden weapons
The weapon triangle from Fates, with axes/bows beating lances/hidden weapons beating swords/magic which beat axes/bows
Standard Quality of Life (Danger Radius, MMB, etc.)
A nameable avatar character whose appearance can be slightly customized
I wanted to make a small update since I didn’t think I’d make so much progress in such little time, but with the way things are going, looks like the game will be releasing in 2022. Don’t want to jinx it, but this is a pretty large timeframe to get things done in. More details to come in a few weeks, probably.
Another update, I’m going to set the release date at sometime in December. Might be before that, but don’t expect anything. The game is definitely pretty close to being done, though. Just some other obligations to fulfill and such.
Unfortunately this isn’t a happy announcement, but I’ve decided to shelve development of the project. What’s done is publicly available, and I’ve posted the link in the OP. It’s about 90% done but there’s a lot of little things missing, including the ironman forcing asm and the last 2 chapters on either route, as well as a lot of text. Hope this satisfies anyone waiting for the game, and apologies to all who were looking forward to it. I might come back some day in the far future and finish it up, but for the foreseeable future the project is cancelled.
Kind of a bummer, but if you’re looking for projects to play, check out everything that was just featured in FEE3!
I’ve gone back and made A route fully gameplay complete. There’s still some text missing and placeholders, as well as the ending being incomplete, but it’s playable all the way through. More progress might happen soon, or it might not. I felt the project deserved this much, at least.
Glad you went back and finished at least one of the routes. I played like the first half of the game until I got a game over, but didn’t feel like restarting since there was no ending. I really liked what I played up to that point, so I’ll definitely give it another go.
Orientem is the complete one, sorry for the confusion. Also, game is being worked on right now, but there’s no ETA on when it will be completed, it’s chugging along very, very slowly. There’s not much left, though.
Just to be sure, is Orientem one is the one that begins with “Secret passage” chapter? Because if you choose “Ally with Orientem” in Ch. 15x, the pre-chapter naration of Ch. 16 implyes, that you allied with Occidens and Vise versa.
On unreleated note, I think outlaws/ninjas shouldn’t loose pick/steal upon promototion to bow knights/mechanists, because they don’t do that in fates.
Yeah, it is. The dialogue is unfinished so I can take a look at it and fix any inconsistencies, thanks for the heads up.
The reason outlaws/ninjas lose pick/steal on their alternate promotions is because of split promotions, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense for mercs/ninjas to get those skills on promo. I might change this though and just make those skills inherent to the units instead.
Got stuck in the Secret passage chapter, I activated both switches, but nothing happened, then the reinforcement show up, after killing them nothing changed, walls still there preventing escape.
Theoretically, the chapter still can be beaten if you deploy a flyer, because the cave walls north of southern brick wall count as “cliff”, and flyers can fly through them.
Looking into this but apparently if you wait one extra turn on them it should work? If you can’t get this working then you’ll have to stop, I’m afraid. Will be fixed the time of the full release for sure, though. Thanks for letting me know.
