IRON NEST Punishes You With Seven Steps To Fire One Shell
The design withholds all story context at the start and leaves the player alone with a manual, so the tank's fixed specifications, not the player's instincts, decide what happens.
Key Facts
- IRON NEST is a first-person dieselpunk artillery simulation game in which the player is the sole artilleryman aboard a giant multi-legged tank.
- The game's Steam store page describes the setting as Spain in the late 1920s, during an alternate-history civil war between royalists and republicans.
- Firing the tank's cannon requires seven steps, including loading, ballistic calculation, traversing, and elevation adjustment.
- The tank interior includes a shower, toilet, kitchen, and a bed that advances the game to the next day.
- A customizable cat lives inside the tank in the full version of IRON NEST, but not in the demo version.
Reporting from 1 source: Denfaminicogamer.
IRON NEST is a first-person dieselpunk artillery simulation in which the player is the only crew member inside a giant multi-legged tank and operates its cannon on orders from headquarters. The setting is Spain in the late 1920s, an alternate-history civil war between royalists in power and republicans rebelling against them, according to the game's Steam store page. None of that is explained when play begins. Firing the gun takes seven steps, from loading and ballistic calculation to traversing and elevation adjustment, and manuals placed beside each interior facility are the only instruction. The tank has a shower, toilet, and kitchen, and a bunk that advances the game to the next day, where a newspaper reports what the previous day's shelling did. A cat lives inside the tank in the full version and can be customized in detail; the demo version has no cat. The piece is based on a demo playthrough.
The two writers credited on the game's start and end screens are Aoki Kakuzan on text and anymo on editing. The opening screen shows the two developers saluting, and the same image closes the game, a choice the piece compares to the "rei" bow in karate.
- Turret traverse: hold the lever left or right and the turret keeps rotating on its own until it reaches the ordered angle.
- The turret has two sides, so loading a shell into each lets you fire repeatedly without a separate reloading step.
- Missions that start a time limit on the first impact make the dual-loading trick especially useful.
- Plotting enemy positions from an observation point can be done in one pass rather than target by target.
- Five switches near the gun are only a confirmation step and are not required to fire, though the writer presses them anyway for the sound.
The loose parts of the cage invite their own play. Brewing coffee mid-mission is still done by manual, and twisting valves to fill the cabin with steam, cutting all tank power, or firing illumination flares over your own position are all possible. The newspaper after a night's sleep can show how the shelling was politically exploited, and the writer points to the "command responsibility" rule, that the commander carries ultimate responsibility for a soldier's actions, as consolation. Distance to enemy artillery: 6.87 kilometers. Distance to bed: unknown.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.