Iron Company
IRON COMPANY is currently in early access! You can play the whole first chapter right now, and more is on the way.
THE STORY
At the climax of a desperate war for farmland, John Sykes and Petra Raskoph fought a duel to the death. Dragged away to safety by their comrades, both of them survived. A year after the end of the war, they meet again by chance; Sykes, directionless, depressed, and running low on cash, and Raskoph with a dangerous but lucrative job offer that neither of them can afford to turn down.
PLAYABLE CHARACTERS
John Sykes
A farmer's son, ex-soldier and all-around capable guy, Sykes is good with his hands and bad with people. Cool-headed on the surface, but always boiling just below it, he's kind of always planning for the worst-case scenario.
Something is following him.
Petra Raskoph
Formerly a very put-together Inquisitor, Petra is clumsily navigating her new life as a fugitive. Anxious, excitable, and always a bit distracted. She seems to have a masterful command of magic, and a lot of secrets she's keeping a lid on.
She has forgotten something.
FAQ
When will it be finished? Should I play it now or just wait?
It'll be done... when it's done. I'm hoping after I get the first chapter 100% done, I'll have my process down and I can release the rest sort of serially. Feedback fuels me-- that's why I've put it up in hilariously early access. My #1 priority is the dialogue so I start with that, and everything else comes after. If you're interested, give it a spin and tell me if you like it. ;)
What's the genre/tone situation here?
It's (deep breath) mid-apocalyptic-horror-comedy-fantasy-found-family-enemies-to-friendsfiction.
Is it historical fiction?
Nope. Real history is a barometer I use for research/writing, but it doesn't take place in our world. It's set on a fictional earth in the 1930s.
Will it be gay?
Who do you think I am???? (disregard previous sentence if you don't know who i am.) YES it will be gay. Gay will happen.
Which of my screens do I play this on?
It's downloadable for PC/Mac/Linux! You can also play the browser version on this page, which is... TECHNICALLY playable on mobile devices. I strongly recommend downloading the game onto a computer/laptop/steam deck if you can. The browser version can be laggy. It runs best in Chrome.
Uhhh. Are you gonna try to polish and color all these sketchy placeholder images into fully-rendered art? ...By yourself??
OH GOODNESS, NO. Here's a blog post about the visual direction I'm headed in.
Have you made any other visual novels?
Yes! >:)
Where can I see more?
The best place to see me firing off Iron Company posts all hours of the day is bluesky. i post a lot of behind-the-scenes content on my blog, in its tag. I'm also on a bunch of other social media. My toyhouse page has been slowly morphing into an Iron Company character wiki.
PLANNED FEATURES
- text, and images that go with the text!
- chapters from different character POVs, choices, and multiple endings
- accessibility features, like image descriptions and some active content warnings
- Petra (fully implemented in chapter 1 already)
CONTENT WARNINGS
violence, blood/gore, copious foul language, use and implied abuse of alcohol, a lot of onscreen smoking, and general horror content. mental illness/trauma is a big part of the story and there are some brief allusions to certain characters being suicidal at points. this story is intended for mature readers (at least 17+). if i were the ESRB i'd rate it M17, but i'm not the ESRB.
it's also kind of a period piece where sometimes i ignore my research so prepare yourself, NERDS (i say, as i write and draw a visual novel born of my undying love of anime and video games)
CONTROLS
(Click to expand the Instruction Booklet)
YOUR FRIEND the Quick Menu - This displays at the bottom of the screen. It has several options:
Back - Takes you back a line. (You can also scroll back with your mouse wheel.)
History - Displays previous text, chatlog-style.
Skip - Skips forward until you either click skip again or the game presents you with a choice. Useful for multiple playthroughs/experimenting. (In Preferences, you may make adjustments to what gets skipped.)
Auto - When clicked on, text will advance on its own without your intervention, and only stop at choices. You can adjust "Auto-Forward Time" in the Preferences menu.
Save - Takes you to the Save menu.
Q. Save - Saves in the "quick save" slot.
Q. Load - Loads from the "quick save" slot.
Prefs - Opens Preferences.
(TRUST ON/OFF) - Click to turn the Trust display on or off. (Trust is the game's numerical measurement of how much Sykes and Petra trust each other.)
(PROGRESS ON/OFF) - Click to turn the progress bar on or off. This will show you roughly how far along you are in the chapter.
(sorry, some of these features don't work on mobile yet :( i'll get there!)
The speed of the text itself can be adjusted from the Preferences menu, but I recommend bumping it up as little as possible, and only doing so if it's really driving you bonkers.
The game will save automatically at certain points. You can find these saves under "A" in the Load menu. If you really goof up or lose your save you can utilize the Skip function to get back to where you were without much trouble (turn on "Skip Unseen Text" in Preferences if you lost your save).
Take Screenshot - S key
(Secret Bad Ending Location - click to see spoiler)
To see this ending, you'll have to get Trust as low as possible. Turn on the Trust display and make mean choices. If you accidentally do something that increases Trust, roll back using the mouse wheel or Back button in the Quick Menu. If Trust is at or below 0, you will be given the choice to abandon Petra during the confrontation with the Host.
Lots more sketches, character bios, etc. over on my Toyhouse. I ramble a lot about the game's development over here on my blog. You can find all of my social media links at doodlemancy.com!
Made in Ren'py, The Free Visual Novel Engine!
Download
Install instructions
⚠️ Please Note: Some virus detection software, including Windows Defender, will sometimes give you a false positive when you run the game; this is a known issue with Ren'py games in general.
MAC USERS: If it's not working, you may have to do this.
Development log
- 1.11 - Now it works on web LOL18 days ago
- 1.11 - Personality Quiz, UI Improvements, and more!19 days ago
- Progress update + some fun art for your face33 days ago
- 1.10 - The Visuals Update, #174 days ago
- Some screenshots from the upcoming update80 days ago
- 1.9 - Web/Mobile version!Aug 17, 2024
- 1.8 - Bells and whistlesAug 14, 2024
- 1.7 - Some teeny tiny bug fixesAug 09, 2024
Comments
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1) The character dynamics are very good, they sound very natural in conversation and are pleasant to follow (namely I picked all the nice choices, if I did the mean ones Id probably think Sykes is too mean, as I did feel that for the non-choice dialogues[I'd never tell Erika to stfu]).
2) Erika is cute, I need more doses of her looks
pls post any doodles you have of her, the singular sprite left me hungry for more(nvm found the doogles on toyhouse reading before posting is good)3) I AM SYKES THE IMMORTAL (this is a tip based on how I saw it on a VN i played, but I think you could do the battle scene with slash animation cut-ins; I had the impression youd make a cg for each scene, which is a bit of a big investment, so just a suggestion to save your time and deliver the experience the same way, FX animation, a hurt sprite and good sounds sell a scene better than cgs can sometimes)
4) I don't know where the store might go from here, but Erika's mystery is interesting enough to make me want to see more. Who knows if she's the key to everything or just Act 1, but she was the biggest hook of Chap 1 to me.
5) Just played one game, will see how other choices spin out later, but I do appreciate when bad choices can lead you to a bad end, instead of just a branch dialogue that then resolves into the same event again. I think all vn players save 5 times whenever a choice pops up anyway, so theres no need to fear killing the player for a choice (doesnt even need to game over and title screen most of the time, just jump back to the choice screen after the bad end rolls).
6) You're a good writer.
THANK YOU for this very detailed and kind comment!! FEEDBACK MAKES ME SO POWERFUL AND STRONG.
1) HAHAHA people mostly seem very inclined to pick the nice choices-- though i've tried to make sure every choice is interesting or valid somehow even if it's mean or seems like a bad idea. i want to try to reward people's choices no matter what they choose. we'll see how well that holds up as the stack of variables gets taller and taller-- but it's my philosophy ;)
2) HEHEH yessss! you got the goods! and i'll definitely have more doodles to post, many many many more, on my various social medias.
3) is this a Golden Kamuy reference????? i love Golden Kamuy. anyway yeah-- i'm gonna have to find ways to work really economically with what i want to pull off. i'm definitely not going to be fully rendering a colored and shaded illustration for every sketch you see; it'll be cleaner sketches, mostly monochrome with stand-out color here and there. i'm getting a sense for what i want to do as i go. cut-ins are a good idea i should think more about how to execute on haha. i'm definitely not following VN convention here LMAO
4) i love Erika very very much and i have. plans ;D
5) i actually had a long conversation with myself about this-- back in the day, in a very early demo almost nobody has seen, i had lots of choices that could kill you, and i decided it'd be more interesting to make the player feel like a lot of choices could kill them but actually mostly have even the worse-looking ones end in Messy Success. that said: you definitely can die. have fun ;D
6) WAUAUAGUuagugh THANK YOU..........
3) now that I know youre into it, checks out, I can see how it might have influenced your writing now. They don't sound like Sugimoto and Asirpa at all, but the way they relate and talk to each other has that same vibe, it's a relationship you do want to see more, in a variety of situations to see how they clash or meld into each other.
I'm also writing one that doesnt follow convention, and doing the exact opposite of the very advice I'm giving, but it's what fit for me, so in the end we can only create whats natural to us.
5) I think that works well too. It's two extremes, one right choice and 4 that lead to a dead end makes it predictable, as does no single choice ever leading to a death. So the only way to really make it feel real, is sometimes it being deadly, and you not being able to tell you doomed the timeline because things seemed like a messy success as usual. Balanced stakes keep them vivid in the player's mind (and VNs have the advantage of lightweight navigation, so such dead ends dont hurt in a playtime measure as much as it would in different genres.)
3) hehehehe! i watched it for the first time this year! desperately awaiting season 5, probs gonna start collecting the manga. i've been working on IC much longer but it DEFINITELY had an influence on me to some degree, haha. i aspire to its incredible level of shenanigans vs. excitement and i love the way it rock-tumblers all the characters around.
and hey good luck with your own project! throw me a link sometime if ya want ;D
5) yeah!! i think it's a fine approach depending on one's goals. the big thing i learned from my really old demo (and from playing other narrative games) was that once you prime a player with the idea that their choices could be deadly, they'll do a lot of the work of freaking out about it themselves. even if it goes okay, lots of players will feel like they probably barely scraped by or be afraid they missed an important hint, even if they were totally on the right track the whole time. i'm toying with the idea of maybe having one possible dead end in every chapter.
3) Now I need Sykes to chitatap on the wild. Seeing the rest of the cast in the main page and they seem like a colorful bunch already (i like the ginger), if you can keep the energy you gave the main cast here across them, I'm sure you'll have as many shenanigans going around. I personally can't simulate Golden Kamuy at all, so I can only cheer when I see people that can do that style of storytelling because it really is fantastic.
And the story itself is written, I'm just producing endless pieces of art for it, so if things go well, I'll be taking you up on that this year already. (the hardest part of publishing is being seen by anyone so i can't refuse this deal)
5) That sounds like a very good idea to do, I think people love the "what if..." timelines, even if just for the morbid curiosity of how things would have turned out if everything went wrong, so it adds spice for sure. (The hint part is one thing I do like to use in my route splitting a lot. even if its a dead end, theres a drop of info that helps solve the overall mystery or plot ahead of time in it, something the correct choice wont say ever, or not this early at least.)
3) he would do it. he would say chitatap. and yeah getting Seen is hard! getting someone to commit their time to look at a new thing that they're not sure if they'll like... it's hard in a world with so many things vying for everyone's attention constantly. i'm always honored when anyone takes the time because i sure don't get as much reading done as i'd like LMAOOOOO
5) THAT'S SUCH A GOOD THOUGHT. DROPPING HINTS IN BAD ENDS. and lore. i'm writing that down on cute paper, i'm putting it up with magnets in my locker, (this is metaphorical i don't have a locker i am 33)