While not flawless, from a mechanical design and worldbuilding standpoint this is a super compelling game. It's the first I've played from Iron Tower Studios, and its made me curious about their other games, Age of Decadence and Dungeon Rats. The setting, a colony ship established by evangelical Christians intent on escaping an overpopulated and dystopian Earth (at least, according to ship's founders) is already an unconventional starting point for a story. That the ship itself is a ruin owing to a partially successful mutiny, with ships systems in disrepair and a set of competing factions vying for control, is both a believable human outcome and a good starting point for conflict and political intruige. Mechanically, the game is a combination of character stats providing linear-scaling bonuses (which can only be changed after character creation using cybernetic implants), a learn-by-doing skill system (which forces the player to make hard choices about how they specialize their character and solve problems, since there is no way to master all skills), and a feat-based progression system (which rewards meeting certain stat threshholds and can offer some really transformative effects for characters, especially in combat). Combat is turn-based squad tactics, with a maximum party size of 4, a cover system, and a variety of gadgets and consumables to level the playing field. I played on Underdog and had to reload many fights multiple times, so if you don't like that style of combat I would recommend playing on Hero. The combat encourages you to heavily leverage consumables and equipment to let you turn the tide in a fight, which is intended to discourage players from item hoarding. I found that was a hard habit to break, but if you are really struggling in combat, be sure to get and use some grenades! Word count is stopping me from writing more. Really liked this game and want to see more from this publisher. So please, give this a try and support Iron Tower!
