Early AccessAttract Mode
wfmag.cc \ 13HOW IT ALL
BEGAN
The roots of Iron Danger go
back to 1998, when Action
Squad’s CEO Sami Timonen
was still in school. “We had to
read Finnish folklore, Kalevala,”
he explains. “The stories
were really inspirational, so
I felt that it would be cool to
create a new folklore with a
[different] angle. I got a vision
to mix elements of our folklore
with modern action movies.
I started to draw sketches of
these ideas.
“Later, I went through
comics, and I thought that if
Marvel has Thor and there
was a Captain Britain and a
Captain America, why don’t we
Finns have our own superhero,
like Captain Finland? So, I
painted a concept of that.
At a later stage, I had my
superheroes fighting against
mechanical tank bears in
a World War 2 setting with
Finnish folklore vibes.
“[We eventually made a
live-action proof of concept
trailer], and during post-
production, I got more
and more inspired by the
Kalevala [and other folklore].
I wanted to step back in
time to the Iron Age with my
superheroes, bringing with
me some of the mechanical
elements of the modern
world. What would be cooler
than steaming tank bears
made back in the Iron Age?”against incredibly difficult enemies, and you can
still eventually come out on top, as you have all
the time in the world to perfect your tactics.
“The game mechanics also gave us a fresh
take on more grounded combat, as everything is
based on real-time strategy under the hood,” he
continues. “In turn-based
games, your tactics are
not ‘realistic’: you are
playing with a different set
of rules. But in our game,
you get to experience
a hectic, ever-evolving combat scenario with
more true-to-life, real-time tactics but with the
usability of a turn-based game.”
Despite the rewinding – and repetition by
design – there’s a focus on not grinding through
Iron Danger; a desire to respect the player’s time
and make them focus on the more important
stuff – not replay sections for the sake of it. This
is achieved through elements like a lack of loot –
there isn’t even an inventory in the game – and a
focus on combat in design, rather than the more
‘tedious’, in Kemppainen’s words, elements.
Another step away from the tedium of
sameyness comes through Iron Danger’s
embrace of Finnish folklore and culture.
Rather than looking elsewhere for inspiration,
Action Squad is doubling down on what it knows.
“For me personally, taking Finnish inspiration
was a great way to honour our own quirks,”
Kemppainen says. “Only a handful of games
have actually been Finnish in style. What we
perceive as mundane is exotic for everyone else
around the world – and
as we are a nation of five
million people with our
own language and habits
no-one understands- it really is exotic. So I
wanted to embrace Finland and our folklore. It is
full of unused gems of stories and themes.”
As the first release from Action Squad, a lot
is riding on Iron Danger. Even with the team’s
combined experience at the likes of Rovio,
Supercell, Remedy, and more, Kemppainen
acknowledges the studio is “an unknown entity.”
“We struggled a lot with finding funding and
a publisher,” he says. “It was not an easy sell:
first-time team making a debut game with never-
before-seen, unproven game mechanics. But we
were always able to keep going thanks to Sami
[Timonen, the CEO’s] relentlessness. In Finland
we call it ‘sisu’ – he has heaps of it!” It roughly
translates as ‘grit’ – and there looks to be a lot
involved in the making of the game.
Early AccessAttract Mode
“What we perceive as
mundane is exotic for
everyone else” The decision to include mechanical units
wasn’t done for attention, or really for any
reason other than the team liked them. So
they put more in. Solid reasoning, to be fair. The world is a mix of Iron Age fantasy, steampunk,
and a hint of modern-day for good measure. Being able to rewind your actions
gave Action Squad carte blanche
to make encounters punishingly
difficult. If you fail, just rewind and
try again until you don’t.wfmag.cc \ 13