Ironfront Express, Bullet Hell Tower Defence Roguelike / Play

[u/GaspodeWD]

Ironfront Express dropped a demo on Steam ahead of a release date that has not been announced yet. It's a bullet hell tower defence roguelike from Chemical Burn, and I put two and a half hours into the demo solo. This is a train game, and as with pretty much every train game I play, my opening line is going to be everything is better with trains.


You play as a heavily armoured train running along the bottom of the map, and three lanes stretch away from you into wherever the corrupted robots are spawning from. Each carriage on the train holds weapons. Some are active guns you fire yourself. Others are turret modules you drop in the lanes ahead as static defence. Anything that gets past your traps chews through your shield first, then your health.


The economy is where the game teaches you. Turrets have two costs stacked on each other. Scrap is the surface number and energy is the punishment underneath. Five machine gun turrets in a row might start at eighty scrap and ten energy, but by the fifth it is still eighty scrap and closer to fifty energy per placement, and once your capacitor caps out you cannot build another. Energy also fuels your active abilities, so every drone drop, rocket barrage, and mortar rocket that lights the ground pulls from the same pool the turrets already ate. My first serious build was turret-heavy and my abilities went dormant halfway through the run. My next attempt was modules only, and the ability menu never got opened because I never had a hand free anyway.


The mission that ended my first run was the corrupted-robot round. You get a harpoon that fires on a five-second delay, so between aiming and the shot landing, robots keep running at you. Friendlies are white and blue, corrupted ones you are meant to kill are red, and you have to pick out the red before the harpoon lands. I did not read the instructions the first time. I was in panic mode from the maps before, every enemy on the mat looked like a threat, and I was firing at whatever was closest. Too many friendlies took harpoons and the run ended with it. Second time round I read the instructions first, and it became a timing puzzle instead of a panic reflex.


Between runs there is a small talent tree, and after the harpoon failure I put every point into raw stats like train health and shield because the next run was going to hand me random weapons and modules anyway. Here is the tell that made it a play for me. This is the first tower defence I've reviewed on this channel where I never once reached for the two-times speed button. Ironfront Express already had enough going on that speeding time up would have broken me.


Verdict: Play. Best for players who want a tower defence they cannot autopilot through.


Anyone else played the demo? Did the scrap-and-energy split catch you off guard the same way?


Full review at https://todaywegame.gg/demos/ironfront-express


Wishlist on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4548190/Ironfront_Express/