Ironheart--Pilot a giant medieval iron war mech in 1182 AD!

Announcements
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We’re proud to announce that Ironheart, the latest in our popular “Choice of Games” line of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for Steam, Android, and on iOS in the Choice of Games Omnibus app.

It’s 33% off until March 5th!

Pilot and customize a giant iron war mech in this alternate medieval history! In 1182 AD, the Papacy, the Caliphate, and the Mongols are at war, and they all have mechs–hulking war robots, powered by energy from mysterious “skystone” meteorites.

Ironheart is a 250,000-word interactive novel by Lee Williams. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Our story begins in the far future, on a space mission to intercept a comet that can open wormholes through space and time. When your ship and the crew are sucked in and thrown backward through time, you awake from cryogenic suspension in 1182–at the height of the Third Crusade.

Trapped in the past, you must choose sides in the mech war between Saladin’s Caliphate, the Catholic Papacy, and Genghis Khan’s Mongolian Golden Horde.

Will you search doggedly for the rest of your crew or focus your energies on helping one of the factions in the war that rages around you? Do you seek to unite a divided land? Or use your advanced knowledge to gain wealth and power for yourself?

Along the way, you may meet historical figures such as Saladin, fight off attacks from the notorious order of Assassins and the secretive Knights Templar, or even take part in a grand tournament of mechs!

• Play as male, female or non-binary; gay, straight, bi or asexual.
• Pilot a giant medieval war machine! Choose how to equip, customize and decorate your machine.
• Take sides in the Third Crusade as a knight or emir. Rise through the ranks of your chosen faction or strike out alone.
• Hone your ability in a wide range of skills including warfare, diplomacy, medicine and engineering.
• Manage your own fiefdom. Decide how to govern, what to build and who to recruit.
• Entangle yourself with a wide supporting cast of characters, from fools and bandits to priests and princesses.
• Seek revenge, strive to build a better world or just live it up in the 12th century!

What new future will you forge now that the old one is gone?

We hope you enjoy playing Ironheart. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our ranking on the App Store. The more times you download in the first week, the better our games will rank.

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A word on release day etiquette:

  • Blur your spoilers! Use [ spoiler] sandwich in that spoils things [/spoiler ] Just remove the extra spaces in the brackets to get the code to work.
  • Remember: no one has had a chance to play the whole game yet, let alone multiple times, so no one except mayyyybe the author knows the answer to your question about how to do this thing or that thing. It’s not his job to answer those, though of course nice if he does.
  • Asking who the ROs are betrays a lack of interest/respect for a project that is not primarily about romance, and took thousands of hours and years of work to complete. You can romance Ygraine, John, Sana, Karim, Mamun, and Isabella.
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Massive mech-sized congratulations on the release, @Wiwyums! I’m so excited to play the whole thing!

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All the congratulations to @Wiwyums! I’m so proud of his hard work and commitment.

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Let’s get into this robot already! :smiley:
I love cog covers for the games, I wish they were available as wallpapers.
Congrats on the release.

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Thank you! Very excited and nervous myself…

I’ve had a few people already ask me who you can romance (Mary’s answer above is spot on) and how you can meet the Mongols (mild spoiler here: You can do a whole playthrough without ever meeting them but if you do want to, it’s wise to pay attention to any stories you might overhear on your travels).

I’ve also had some people ask which historical characters you can meet but I won’t list those yet as there are quite a few and some of them rather well-hidden. I’ll give a bonus point to anyone who correctly identifies the one character I lifted from folklore though…

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Woo-hoo just got it , can’t wait anymore…

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It hurts that I can’t romance Vivienne anymore. I liked our brief encounters.

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Sincerely, This game has for me the worst intro in a Cog. Too many questions with no content whatsoever and very very little exposing about the project and the lore of the game. The interview felt cringey and forced.

I am actually in Chapter VII and even if the game has brilliant moments. It feels so rushed and trying to get too much covered without deep Then I found that I couldn’t drop all the religious people I didn’t want out of my village or demolish both temples even if choose to be atheist.

I am not saying that the game is bad is just a normal action game with a fast-paced style. I will actualize my review when I ended it. However, without random character creation or skipping the intro, I don’t think this game has replay value. I won’t play that intro again for sure.

Edit. I have end it and I hated the end I got because It has no sense at all in how has been introduced in last moment and without give me a choice to say no after the plot twist. That is a bad move.

I helped the man in the mountain because my character wanted destroy Muslims using deception and when peace over help christians. Then i found that he was from Khan’s Muslims and I WASN’T GIVE A CHOICE to change faction. So I was forced to see how i ended up being a nobody under the Islamic world… Zero to do with my intention.

The mecha combats are well done and very interesting but the rest of game feel so rushed and fast paced. There is barely no explanation or exposition game is jumping from a scene to the next without even give time to digest anything. Ton asked me if Isabella is pretty she must have jedi powers because when she enters she BITES MY EARTLOBE! without even say Hi…

My score 6/10

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I’m like ten pages in, and already there’s a classic Blur reference. Think I’ll enjoy this one …

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I’ve enjoyed the prologue so far, and look forward to purchasing the whole thing tommorow once my paycheck goes thru. I hope the story allows me to focus on raising nadia rather than just dragging me deeper into the religious conflict.

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Considering how much interest I take in the historical and cultural ramifications of the Crusades (Plus I have a big fat weak spot for gigantic robots, arthurian legends, and medieval armor), I cannot say I’m an unbiased judge, and I’m going to try my best to remain spoiler-free, but I’ll slap my two cents here:

First off: As I mentioned before, I love the themes and historical backdrop for this particular title. It gives me a lot of Michael Crichton’s “Timeline” vibes. This is strictly a subjective opinion. I honestly enjoyed the combat and I delighted in quite a few of the conversations, especially the dialogue between you and Tonzo. He’s a complete riot. This is a good thing. I also delighted in a lot of the historical references and appearances. A few of them even caught me by surprise, such as the secret of Baldwin IV.

However, there are a few things that I will poke at (And mind that some of this is subjective, and some of my impressions are limited by the fact that this is just Day One of the release):

Certain characters to me felt more fleshed-out than their counterparts in other factions.

Tonzo is amazing. Too amazing. He makes Habib, your replacement if you join the the Caliphate, look rather like a dead fish in comparison. It makes me more want to work with the Papacy just to hang around Tonzo more.

Some story elements from the intro felt a bit misleading.

MoMo from the intro scene made me feel very suspicious. I had this weird itch in the back of my head, like I expected that robot to show up pulling some political strings near the end. I don’t know if you did write MoMo into a possible ending or not, but if not, then I feel like there’s some plot potential here that didn’t quite get used to its best limit.

Speaking of the intro, the intro feels like it could have used some more proper fleshing-out.

It felt a bit generic and aside from Vivienne, there’s no real sense of the rest of the crew as more than two-dimensional scenery dressing that quickly gets vaporized/lost/decapitated. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you just wanted to focus more on the good stuff. It might have been better to have set the intro to input your character and their initial stat-building as you were being revived from the pod during the Crusades, and have your character’s background as an accidental space-time traveller be slowly revealed through bits and pieces for the reader to piece together as the story progressed.

Some of the endings also could’ve used a bit more development and writing.

The plot twist ending with Baldwin IV? Pretty cool. I gotta admit that becoming a “shadow king” puppet is intriguing, but I feel that the effects of you leaving behind your previous life (Especially any close friends and loved ones) should’ve been better detailed and written about. I would’ve liked to see a conversation between your Baldwin IV persona and a grieving Ygraine, for instance. In addition, the endings in general seem to sideline romance interactions. I do understand however that this story more focuses on the sci-fi/alternate history aspects rather than outright romance.

I would’ve liked to see more impact in regards to the choices you make in regards to mech customization options in combat.

I got the distinct impression that your character’s performance in a battle scenario was generally more dependent on player skills rather than the choice of weapons you picked or aspects of your personality; If it’s not, then that’s just my mistaken perception.

Certain characters felt heavily sidelined as the story progressed.

Are interactions with Nadia more dependent on which skill set you have? I generally tended to see her more often in the story when I was doing doctor stuff, but I noticed that there weren’t really many opportunities to do doctor stuff as you went further and further into the story as a castle holder, and by the very end of it, it’s almost as if she just disappears outright.

Overall though, I consider this a solid effort. The fact that I actually wanted to play it over and over again makes this a good addition to my library for me.

8/10

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So. I just started this game. And wow. What an intro. Spoiled myself and saw that you can’t romance viv or any of the people in your crew for that matter. Which makes me kinda sad. Also!!! Since I just started, I’m not sure but… did one of your crew members die??? Time to find out!
I’m super excited about where this will go. I know this ha historical and it seems like the story will make you stay in the past, but I’m high key hoping there is an ending in where you’ll be able to go back to your own time

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May I ask how can I romance Tonzo? I tried restarting few times but he always said nooooo he’s just a poor fool :man_facepalming:t2::sob: i cried idk where did i do wrong

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@Planetarian She has a daughter if you can get over the weirdness…:slight_smile:

@poison_mara Thanks for playing and for the thoughtful review. I’m sorry some of it fell flat for you and I’ll look at the ending again: I’d thought there was still a chance to say no after Rashid reveals his intent but if there isn’t, there probaly should be. Also, that was very forward of Isabella! She’s only supposed to do that if you’ve been flirting with her already. I’ll check it!

@Schliemannsghost I’d forgotten I did that! Had to go back and look to see what you meant. :slight_smile:

@Disciple Well, I have to say that if I have one regret, it’s not fleshing out the Nadia storyline a little more. At the moment, you can interact with her at points throughout the game but not really affect her development. If I have the chance, I’ll definitely fix that in a future update. In the meantime, I hope it doesn’t spoil your enjoyment too much!

@Portalboy Thanks for taking the time to write such a constructive and insightful review. I really appreciate it. Couple of things that might interest you: the story element you mention from the intro does indeed crop up again later in the game so your itch wasn’t misplaced! There’s a whole chunk of content that’s fairly well-hidden but the key is to pay attention to any stories you might hear on your travels… Also, I think you’re quite right that the combat is sometimes a ittle vague about what helps and what doesn’t and that’s something I’ll look into addressing. Especially since there actually is quite a lot going on ‘under the hood’. Variables which affect combat include archon armour, speed and weapons and player pilot ability, wounds and sometimes skills (archery and athlete). Mechanic and doctor affect it indirectly because doc heals more wounds between fights and mech repairs more damage.

@adastral Returning to the future is tricky but not impossible. However, as any good jinn will tell you , you should be careful what you wish for… :wink:

@Bennet You can romance Tonzo in the early chapters (or at least fool around with him - he isn’t really one for a steady relationship) but once you’re a noble he’ll back off. However, if you don’t have another partner at the end of the game and you had once expressed an attraction to him, you’ll end up settling down together in as close to harmony as he’ll allow!

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No , I wasn’t flirting with her I only reply to Tonzo that she was pretty and attractive. Except say that is considered flirting.

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This was exquisite! I had a lot of fun being a (little) fish out of water, and the characters endeared themselves to me so easily! I loved the multiple options available to build your character, and the multifaceted look at the different groups of people during that point in history was intriguing!

I ended up being very fond of Habib–he and Nadia were like the kids I never had! I really wish we had more opportunities to interact with them both. I also have to ask, does Ali the Fox make more than one appearance in the game?

The ending I got left me a bit teary eyed. Oh Viv, dear Viv! And Habib kissing my hand in the end, and his words, ooooh. That was heartwarming.

I enjoyed the love interests too! They were fun! I did find myself pining for Saladin though, but I think that says more about me than the game. Haha!

Do you intend to release a guide to the game some time soon? I’d love to know if I’ve missed any secrets!

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I already played it a few times and it’s an excellent game. It has a lot of playability, it offers many different paths and stories to discover and It’s well written, the story flows well during the game. I didn’t play too much attention to the romance paths as this isn’t focused on that.

I took me (a lot of patience :laughing:) some playthroughs to save Raymond, I felt my Mc owed it to Guillaume after all the help and treatment he has received from him. The thing is I don’t remember the skills status when it worked at last and Raymond was saved.

Congrats for the game @Wiwyums!

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Can’t buy this off of the ios app for some reason. I keep getting a Purchase Failed as soon as I try.

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Hi

Please contact Choice of Games email support since this a platform issue. See email address below:

support(at)choiceofgames(dot)com

Thanks.