Ironcast

Like most roguelikes, though, the true game is about fighting back against the randomness, and you do this with each lesson you learn about the sorts of augmentations to prioritise, and each trick you uncover for minimising battle scars and maximising scrap. If you've got the stomach for the learning curve, you can probably cut it in this army. And if you can, you'll discover a game that's tense and personable and clever.

The story is a touch blandly presented, but hardly an important factor in the scheme of the game. It's completely novel, and that's a rare thing to say about any game, and even rarer to conclude it succeeds in its originality.

Ironcast is a surprisingly strategic and complex game, while will hold your interest for quite a while. There's enough randomisation for the title to feel fresh for a long time, and every battle is one of tension and risky moves, with each action really meaning something. Winning a skirmish feels very satisfying, with the rewards after feeling even better, and though the difficulty may put people off, those who can grin and bear the painful defeats will be treated like un prince.

All told, Ironcast is one of the most in-depth and engaging match three puzzlers that we've seen. The game's pitch is a bit of a tough sell — it's clearly trying to juggle a lot of different genre elements — but Ironcast somehow manages to pull it all off in a way that is uniquely innovative and frustratingly addicting. The various elements being fused here make for a game that is endlessly replayable, but not at the cost of becoming repetitive or boring. We would strongly recommend that you pick up Ironcast if you're looking for a game that can be a good time sink, but can also be comfortably played in short bursts. Do yourself a favour and try this one out.

Ironcast is the very definition of the saying "easy to pick up, difficult to master". The world, the characters and the art style are all top notch and really serve to draw you in, and once you are in, the compulsion to just have one more go is almost irresistible. The gameplay is balanced very nicely and we can't not recommend it, with only the freezes and crashes to really report as drawbacks. If you are looking for a puzzle game for your Xbox One, look no further than this. Picking it up would be a capital idea, what what?

Even though Ironcast doesn’t have much of a story – it exists mainly to give you more chances to play the puzzle part and present you with different challenges – it has more than enough replay value to keep even casual players coming back again and again. The allure of slowly building up your might to go against the strongest villains meets an engrossing gameplay that’s accessible to everyone. If you factor in the Switch’s hybrid nature, Ironcast suddenly becomes the game you never knew you needed.

Ironcast will attract players who are into carefully selecting their elements before stepping into combat. Thanks to its interesting and well implemented mechanics, this is a game that can easily turn into an addictive experience. It should also be noted that Ironcast could use more variety and that its random components can have a disproportionate weight on the game's difficulty.

That all leads to a particularly positive impression for Ironcast, which easily becomes one of the strongest showings on the Nintendo eShop that I have played in the six months since Nintendo Switch launched. As engrossingly deep as it is engaging, I can only hope that you join us in our fight to defend Victorian England. We need you, commander.

Ironcast rewards those who aren't easily frustrated by loss. The constant losing can be discouraging, but the incremental progress made through each defeat means the game eventually gets easier and more satisfying. It also helps that the only mode happens to be long enough to sustain many losses, so it'll be quite some time before players reach the end. For puzzle fans who crave difficulty, Ironcast is worth checking out.

The Switch eShop is attracting a fair few match up puzzlers of late, but Ironcast should be the first one to be considered. It might be a port, but you would be forgiven for thinking this was designed from the ground up for the Switch.