Stompybot alt-history RTS Iron Harvest is available to play now, if you don't mind getting in on a slightly wobbly ground floor. A major Kickstarter success earlier this year for developers King Art, it looks a lot like Company Of Heroes but with ungainly dieselpunk robots instead of tanks and set in the '1920+' universe of artist Jakub Różalski. While a full story campaign is planned, King Art are shooting to make this one a competitive strategy game from the start, so have opened up their multiplayer alpha builds to players who buy in early. Take a peek at some combat below.
While Iron Harvest's current build (alpha 2) is multiplayer-centric, there is some AI to play against. There's an AI skirmish mode, a basic survival mission for co-op, and three maps to play on - two small battlefields for 1v1 play, and one larger 2v2 map. The current build has ten types of mechs, eight infantry unit types and a bunch of upgradeable base structures. The format should be immediately familiar to anyone who's played Company Of Heroes, base-building and all, but the mechs fill most (if not all) of the slots more conventional vehicles would.
Iron Harvest - Alpha 2 Gameplay Watch on YouTube
It's still early days yet for Iron Harvest, but it certainly looks and sounds the part. Maybe not worth the risk jumping in early unless you're a real-time strategy die hard (an under-served niche lately), but this is one to watch out for. The game cleared all of its Kickstarter stretch goals, including ones for co-op campaign support and challenge missions, plus some extra DLC later down the line. Initial plans were for the game to be single-player only, but it seems that Company Of Heroes fans hungry for something fresh-but-familiar quickly helped the game hit that goal, too.
To get into the alpha, you'll either have to have backed the game on Kickstarter, or pre-order the deluxe edition game direct from King-Art for £42.06/$55. Non-deluxe folks have to wait until beta testing begins.
