Ironseed 25th Anniversary Edition

E 10/26: Several of the bugs mentioned in the original review have been fixed and therefore removed from this review. Thanks, Devs! [h1]A space exploration/RPG straight out of the DOS Days, back with a Unity Engine facelift and nineties as hell interface issues.[/h1] Recommended, but patience is required for modern gamers expecting a streamlined interface. I struggled with the interface in the first hour and then played six hours straight. I love it. [h2]Fun, open exploration in an immersive universe...[/h2] In this game, you control only one ship, the Iron Seed, explore solar systems, gather resources, build equipment, find out what happened that got you stuck in space for a millennia, and try not to die gruesomely or run out of fuel in space. The font, the art style, and even the clunkiness of the interface definitely make their age felt. You have six crew members who form your "bridge" crew: Psychometry, Engineering, Science, Security, Astrogation, and Medic. These six groups are how you manage crew, explore, scan, build equipment, and combat enemies, and the crew's stats can change over time. The reason "bridge" is in quotes is because in order to travel at light speed, everyone had to upload their brains as "encodes" into the ship and leave the bodies behind. You can back up your crew members and their XP, skills and levels, but they also might go crazy and your ship might lose the backups if you take damage in fights. Don't worry about yourself - as the protagonist of this adventure, you are naturally a flawless encode. Also the upload process has a complicated effect on sanity? It's ominous and more than a little vague. Don't mention Earth to the crew, either. Apparently everyone went all in on the spooky space religion after moving to Mars. The universe and its planets are also randomized each game, though the game has no real time limit as far as I can tell, so no, it is not a roguelike. It just makes exploring planets and finding anomalies more interesting and less repetitive. The randomization includes possible life forms rated on a tech scale from 0 - 7 when scanning planets. If a life form has high enough tech (3 and up is industrial age), you may be able to communicate with the planet! They don't get a portrait, but you can still trade. There are a few alien races guaranteed in any game, those that trigger the achievements. You can ask about them even before you meet them, which can be confusing or spoilery. Also, you always start out in a system that has at least one mineable planet so you don't start stranded. Finally, please note that combat is a slow paced and strategic thing in this game. It resembles a submarine warfare game more than anything else - weapon ranges, avoiding damage and shields vs. weapons energy management are the key, not reflexes. This leans more into The Expanse more than Star Wars in terms of fighting. [h2]... Provided you can understand the interface and how to do things![/h2] The biggest hurdle is definitely the lack of information and interface. The word choice can be confusing as well or the UI can make you unsure of what you're doing. When starting the game opens with a ship and crew selection but isn't too forthcoming about what it all means. On the other hand, this is apparently in character - being uploaded is a sanity wrecking process, and the Iron Seed was escaping a totalitarian government. It still could use a lot of work as it tells you nothing useful about the stats: how fast is 200 - 300 acceleration in a fight? How much cargo do you need, and how many weapon nodes do you need? Trick question, none of it matters because you upgrade your ship with materials over the course of the game. The dev response to finding and fixing bugs, such as the ones formerly mentioned in this review, have been pretty good. For a retro game, it has better turnaround time on fixes than some modern ones, sadly enough. Also [b]Shields no longer constantly drain your battery when not in combat[/b] so you can finally get some protection out there without your engines dying... [h2]FINAL THOUGHTS[/h2] I still recommend it but you can find yourself committing materials you could use later because you're unsure of what some of the game's information means. I don't mind, but you might. I would suggest just jumping in, figuring out what the hell it all means as a game in and of itself, and then watching time fly by once you have an understanding as you explore and get hopelessly lost in space. NOTE: I never played Ironseed in the 90's despite my love of Starflight and Star Control. It's definitely weirder and postmodern/posthuman than those two. [h2]This ends the original review. If you love discovering obscurity, no need to read on. If you really want at least SOME idea of how things work, keep going.[/h2] [h1]"THINGS YOU MIGHT WANT TO KNOW BEFORE PLAYING" SECTION[/h1] There are quite a lot of intricacies in this game that may not be immediately apparent and your ability to understand WTF is happening may seriously effect your enjoyment of the game - expect this newly added section to bloat as I try to figure out what is and isn't important to know. First: CREW STATS! Initially presented as an incomprehensible "biorhythm" wave, the truth is simply that the crew has three stats on a scale from 0-100. Skill, Performance, and Sanity. I have no idea what skill and performance do, task speeds? The Medic's 'encode' page skips all the mysterious wavy line nonsense and tells you what's happening. The most important, hands down, is sanity! Think of it like a 'stress' stat. Sanity drains if your crew fails skill checks and tilts if their sanity gets too low. This is much harder in the beginning as you will likely have everyone's 'research' option activated. You want everyone to be researching as much as possible to increase their XP and 'knowledge base', which I have discovered means "how much cool stuff can you slap together in engineering", but research is a stressful thing that greatly stresses out the crew if you have them do tons of stuff at the same time. Navigating, mining, building, that sort of thing. If you drive them too hard, they can't do their jobs. At all. As in, "Brain 0 not recognized due to sanity issue". Your options are limited if things get this bad. You can load a backup -you DID encode their stats when they were doing ok, right? - sacrifice other stats for sanity by... adjusting their brain juices/programming in the Psycheval page, which is not ideal but good in a pinch. Finally, you can just give everyone drugs. No seriously, you can just make [strike]brain drugs[/strike] MIND ENHANCERS, and since nobody has things like a liver or kidneys any more, there is no penalty for hoovering up materials on a planet and just injecting everyone's brains with digital brain drugs until everyone's stats are permanently at 100. No, I have no idea how you "inject drugs" into what is supposed to be an upload of a personality, just jam it in there. Second, MOST OF THE WEAPONS ARE (still) USELESS! As your crew levels up, Engineering can make more types of things. A huge portion of engineering is dedicated to weapons of various types, size, and shapes. All of them sound cool, most of them have a horrible, crippling downside - they use way, way too much power. You only really need a few weapons that meet the following requirements - High range (at least 300KKM), and reasonable energy use (as in, not 2000 KW for every shot). Many weapons do enormous damage but pretty much empty your batteries. The damage type matters depending on the enemy, but not enough to really care. Empty batteries = no shields or engines. Don't use heavy weapons! Keep at a distance and plink your enemies to death, one at a time.

[h2]This is one of the best sci-fi games I've ever played and it was made in 1994! Highly Recommend if you are a fan of retro 90's sci-fi games, difficult space sims, retro games or just into bizarre games that are unique.[/h2] Developer is incredibly hard working, friendly and is always willing to go that extra mile to make sure you have the best possible experience playing his game. It's worthy of purchasing it on just that alone as good developers are rare and deserve your patronage, especially in these dark times. [b]Gameplay wise this game is HARD.[/b] It's a 90's game through and through. [i]There is NO hand holding. NO tutorials. NO autosave.[/i] And numerous other conveniences that today's kids are spoiled with. That doesn't mean it's a bad game. Its just more difficult as were all the games of the 80's and 90's. [h2]Aside from the nuances you'll encounter if you aren't accustomed to 90's gaming this game is incredibly immersive![/h2] The retro pixelated graphics will melt away before you know it and your imagination will take over. Once that happens, it's pure magic. Premise is pretty simple--explore the universe for resources while unravelling the main story arc. Again, it's brutally confusing for the first couple hours but don't fret, it will get better. [h2]Highly recommend reading the manual first and foremost then checking out the guides Bluebeary (main dev) created--those will help you a TON.[/h2] Basically you need to farm resources, use farmed resources to build upgrades, travel to different planets/systems to find more resources, meet advanced lifeforms along the way to trade or fight, build more upgrades, rinse and repeat. Once you get how the game works, it's actually not as hard as it seems and the real fun begins. It's basically like one of my all-time favorites [b]Shortest Trip to Earth[/b] but in first person without the roguelike elements. The music for this game.. Something I am a massive stickler for in my games is GOOD. I own the soundtrack for this game and there's a few songs that just pure sci-fi bliss. It bleeds retro 90's scifi in every track. Coupled with good music in this game is excellent sound effects. The beeps, bobs and sealing of airlocks are incredible. After I started getting the hang of this game it became clear why this game got remade to be as close to possible as the 1994 version. I can only imagine how people felt back in 1994 when they played this game. It must of been the most mind bendingly awesome experience back then and is why there is a dedicated fanbase that was willing to perserve and restore this game to it's former glory after all these years. Even by today's standards this game is far reaching and offers a lot of freedom and depth of gameplay. Playing this game has reminded me how little we actually have advanced in technology and how little video gaming has evolved despite new phones and consoles coming out yearly. It's pretty insane! If games followed Ironseeds trend we'd be living in the matrix by now or something--it was way ahead of it's time. Anyways, I'll try to update this review later but I wanted to get it out before I got distracted with other things. [h2]Great game. Great devs. Great music. Great value. Great retro gaming. Not much more you can ask for if you are a fan of these types of games.[/h2] Support this title and these devs so we can get more Ironseed! There's talk that they may consider a complete remaster or better yet, a sequel which would be just awesome. This series deserves all that and more so help them out and grab this game. Game is on sale for a few more days too if you want to save yourself a few bucks!! [h2]Wish list for the badass devs.[/h2] [b]-Port to Nintendo Switch[/b]--I'd love to see this get ported to Nintendo Switch since it's made using Unity (Switch has amazing Unity support). However, please add in-game achievements because Switch has no achievements. [b]-Stat tracking[/b]--would love to have this implemented. Things like how many planets I've visted, things i've mined, fuel I've used, aliens i've met, times I've killed hostiles, times I've died, time I've spent playing and more! [b]-Bestiary/Codex[/b]--there's so much cool lore, aliens, items, equipment, ships and other very interesting stuff I'd just love to kick back and read over. Would love to see this added. [b]-Controller support[/b]--so I can play from my couch with my feet up like a boss. Not sure if possible but more characters/ships/equipment to find, build or use. Because why not! [b]-Speaking of characters[/b]--would be thrilled to be able to rename my crew members. Better yet, make my own character. Maybe even allow us to upload our own photos too. [h2]That's everything. I love this game. Thank you for reading![/h2]

Other guys here already described game in details. It's great, nothing to add. I want to stress out one thing - its a 90s game all right. But dev has done a huge job catering to modern gamers. Tutorials were added with explanations on mechanics. On easy you can select dialog options instead of keywords. You can switch difficulty on the fly. And even on hard the game is way easier that original. Make sure to fully use bots to stock up and check your crew status regularly for encoding/decoding and you'll be fine. [b] If you sometimes like to "boldly go ..." - this is the game that will definitely scratch that itch! [/b]

Hidden gem from the 90's. A different approach to space exploring and crew management from the golden era of space games. Revived by the developers themselves. If you like Hardcore Sci-Fi give a try.

Ah Ironseed. A hidden gem of the 90's. I played this one 25 years ago. A 1MB file hidden among 600 others on a CD. This remake is quite faithful the the original, though the difficulty has now been notably reduced. I haven't played enough to know if all of the old systems are here, but what I see so far has been quite impressive. If you are tired of all the "newer" games that put graphics over gameplay, give this one a go.

Man, what a pleasant blast from the past. Never would I have imagined this game to be reincarnated by orig. devs. I won't go into details about the game\plot itself, as there is plenty of info\reviews on the web. Instead, i'd like to focus on the differences and personal experience. 1) First of all - people unfamiliar with the original game, (as well as unfamiliar with 80486 ms-dos or earlier era gaming) may find this game rather cryptic to play. Nevertheless, this remake did a great deal in simplifying many aspects, added hints, etc. 2) Sector travel and planet scanning was way faster in the original game (oh, wait, was it also because of a "too powerful cpu" on my pc back then? can't really tell). It may get really tedious in remake, especially sector travel. Mining planets for resources, on the other hand, became way easier and faster (which some of hardcore-type survivalists may not approve :) ). 3) Some of the original music swapped places between scenes in this remake. Personally, the biggest issue for me is main screen theme. Original score (named SECTOR in remake game player) is a sinister sounding ambient theme, perfectly cathing the mood of a dead, cold vacuum of space. In this remake, it got swapped by more "happy-like" theme, which was a cargo hold theme in orig. game. 4) Many infamous bugs and imbalances of the original game were fixed\straightened (like cargo duping, or absurdly power-hungry shields). But of course, porting to a whole new platform can introduce new ones (which I'm sure will be eventually fixed). Through my first playthrough, i happened to stumble upon some, the worst of which is having a strange "auto-win" situation as soos as a combat screen appears (changing difficulty did not fix an issue, any combat became impossible to do). 5) Plot and key elements of gameplay are pretty much the same and stay true to the original. All in all, I had a great nostalgic playthrough.

Klassiker aus den glorreichen Zeiten des PC Gaming, wo man noch Monate mit einem Spiel zubrachte mit steiler Lernkurve. Portiert auf Unity Engine und technisch einwandfrei. Ein Retro SciFi Leckerbissen für nostalgische SciFi Nerds.

its like the dos version back in 1994! it was revlotary for its time! if you liked playing the dos vserion this verion is even better when you get used to it! while it might have some bugs in this version its still true to its dos version! but a bit more easy compared to it! if you lked the dos vseron then this vseron of iron seed is even better! i give it an 8/10 to 10/10 becuse of good it is! if you buy this game it will help the deveopers to make an even better remake or seqal of this game!

I wanted to say "thank you" to the team who recreated the original while keeping faithful to it. I loved this game back when it was released and I have fond memories of playing it on PC-DOS. Great work!

I finished the old MS-DOS version (with the help of the developer himself!) but have not yet finished the remake. Even so, the remake has fixed many issues from the DOS version. This game is about playing as a crew of 6 people who have uploaded their minds into a space ship they call the Ironseed. They no longer have flesh, so you must help build up their stats and sanity. You explore space, scan planets, gather resources, upgrade your ship to survive threats, meet new aliens, and witness the rise of a galactic threat that you must thwart. It can be thought of as Starflight or Star Control 2, but focused more on transhumanism and hard science. Admittedly, the game's combat and resource gathering are nowhere near the level of Star Control 2, but to make up for it, the atmosphere and lore are rather unique, being influenced by a lot of concepts that were brand-new back in the 1990's. The kickass soundtrack by Andrew Sega (Necros) also helps.