I believe that good journalists evaluate games for what they are, instead of for what they are not. While I stand by this statement, I still have moments when I play games and think, “What if?” Maybe it is the rosy dreamer in me, but I like to imagine games doing things that are so far outside of their scope, so far past the realm of possibility, that they just become my own little personal fantasies, never to see the light of day. The Citizen Sleeper games, a few of my favorite indie titles of all time, were two such games that made me dream. I thought to myself, what if Citizen Sleeper were voice-acted? Would that be absurd? “Yes” was my obvious answer until about a month ago when I picked up my review copy of Aether & Iron.
Voice acting certainly doesn’t seem too farfetched for indie games, as many studios, even the small ones, have found ways to incorporate voice work into their projects. Thus, Aether & Iron surprised me, not with the fact of the voice acting, per se, but with the breadth of it. Seismic Squirrel, the developers behind Aether & Iron, are a studio of fewer than 25 people, and yet they assembled one of the most robust, fully voiced scripts I have ever encountered. That is both kudos to their narrative team, composed of at least 6 dedicated writers (~25% of their full team), and also to the voice talent themselves, who nailed their assignment perfectly.
This story-behind-the-story of Aether & Iron is just the beginning of what impressed me. Not only was the script hefty and masterfully interpreted by the voice actors, but it was altogether eloquent. The inner monologue of Gia, the game’s protagonist, was written in exquisite film-noir style, where every word is interrogated and carefully placed to establish the reader as a detective. More than that, the unique expression of the writing, contrasting big personalities with the moody stoicism of the times, spirited me away through the lines of text as if I were under a spell. The aristocratic diction shaped the characters and the decopunk world into a revelatory experience full of poignant moments.
That experience focuses on Gia Rendazzo, the aforementioned smuggler protagonist, on a journey to quietly rebuild her street cred after a job goes sideways. Along the way, she will stumble upon a cataclysmic mission with a much higher profile than she anticipated. To complicate things further, Gia will need to recruit several companions that span the baronies (neighborhoods) of a levitating alternative New York in an effort to fix a number of civil issues before she can tackle the larger, looming threat. This is a character-driven story at its core, and consistent with my earlier praise of the writing, the characters are sharply distinguished. Getting to know their personalities, backstories, and idiosyncrasies was a joy, with each a testament to how carefully the character arcs were written. While many of the macroscopic tropes from film-noir stories persist in Aether & Iron, none of these stories have spent as many words on developing their core cast.
While the writing may steal the show, the game mechanics also rise to the occasion. The majority of the game will be played with a few dice and a plethora of dialogue choices in traditional CRPG fashion. The disco-like gameplay loop will have players choosing their lines carefully as they rub shoulders with the many citizens of New York, fashioning their own path forward as they decide how they want to handle the hostile baron triumvirate, among many other menacing powers. The outcomes in conversations will typically involve a skill-check dice roll, where players add up the numbers from their two standard dice plus one bonus dice to see if the sum meets the requirement for success.
The dice-based system never got old throughout my 45+ hours in Aether & Iron, thanks to the way it evolves over time. The player is able to invest skill points into nine different traits grouped into the abilities of hustle, brass, or smarts. These skill points take the form of dice bonuses when it comes time to roll, which helped shape my personal route through the dialogue. I chose to focus on smooth-talking and gumshoe detective work to navigate most scenarios, while other players may choose to employ their fists with an enforcer build or perhaps take a more strategic approach to outwit their opponents as a brainiac. The dice system cranks up the challenge in the later parts of the game as the minimum integer for success gets much higher, requiring you to roll a 14 or even a 16 between your dice. Spreading your points thin allows you to pass easy skill checks across most challenges but will get you in trouble in the later stages of the game, where more focused bonuses are necessary. Thankfully, there is a respec option that allows you to reassign skill points on the fly.
Dice are not the only thing you will be rolling in Aether & Iron, as the other half, or perhaps one-third, of the game will focus on tactical car combat. In this mode, players will position their vehicles, each containing one of their three chosen party members, along an iso-metric tactical grid. Here, players engage in turn-based combat with their opponents, using a number of unique abilities unlocked via the same skill tree used for the dice bonuses. These battles are exhilarating, in part due to the speed at which the scenery is changing as the cars charge up and down the hard-light streets. The road will merge, narrow, and separate throughout the fight, providing unique perils to avoid or to use to your advantage. Ramming enemy vehicles into a median or other various tile-based hazards like electrical and fire discharges was consistently entertaining.
Moreover, the intricacies of the combat don’t end with the hazards. All combatants will use AP (Action Points) to move their vehicle around the grid, with forward movement costing considerably more AP than movement to the side or backward, offering a ton of strategic latitude. If you can get ahead of your opponents on the road and continue to push them back, they will need to burn a majority of their AP just to close the distance on your characters. Since AP is also used for combat and support abilities, anything that disrupts AP usage can be devastating in battle.
Furthermore, the weapons, abilities, and tools at your disposal can only be deployed in certain directions on the grid based upon the directional slots provided by each vehicle. So you have to be mindful, for instance, to use a straight-line laser in a vehicle that can fire it forwards or backwards instead of a vehicle that can only fire it side to side, especially on narrower roads. Civilian cars also crowd the space and can quickly become additional hazards to all cars behind them if incapacitated, so weaving in-and-out of traffic while using abilities in just the right location becomes a very rewarding tactical dance throughout the game. I just wish the enemy variety scaled in challenge as much as the environmental hazards did, as they felt a bit one-note in the late game.
Perhaps my favorite mechanic in Aether & Iron is the inventory system. I know that makes me sound like quite the D&D geek, but hear me out, as the inventory system really pulls players into the world of the game. Given that this system is based upon outfitting different vehicles with armor, storage space, weapons, and utilities, it fits perfectly that players have to balance their trunk space against their firepower in order to maintain an operable weight limit. I loved purchasing a big van, hollowing out the insides, and filling it with large storage containers so that I could maximize the loot I could carry after battle. In another instance, I used a more slender coupe chassis that could barely hold the driver but was nimble enough with a few specialized weapons to outmaneuver my enemies. Players can even use concealed compartments to avoid suspicion at checkpoints when lugging contraband around the map. In short, the RPG systems for customizing each character’s vehicle (including custom paint jobs) felt very rewarding and consequential in the world of Aether & Iron, providing ample flexibility to various playstyles.
Speaking of world-building, you would be hard-pressed to find a game that does the deco-punk aesthetic better than this one. The artwork is absolutely pristine, richly contrasting elaborate Art Deco skylines with the industrial underbelly of a congested cityscape. Aether-infused trenches cut through each metropolis, filled with citizens sporting their most audacious array of film noir fashion and paraphernalia. There is substantial lore written for every place you visit in this game, and I found myself pouring through the codex for more history on fascinating concepts like the Dreamland Does, death by “grounding,” and vice-purges. The music, performed by a live orchestra, is the exclamation point in the stunning atmosphere of Aether & Iron, bringing each location to life with memorable, melodic music.
My only gripes with the game were mostly technical, and I imagine these will be worked out with post-release patches. In fact, the developer team was so diligent in addressing the bugs and game-breaking sequences I submitted to them during my playthrough that I have no doubt this game will get the extra coat of polish it needs. I also felt that the ending was fantastic up until the very last moment, where it concluded with an anti-climatic and rather formulaic event. Yet, these quibbles pale in comparison to my overall enjoyment while I played, grinning ear to ear throughout most of its runtime.
