New York, New York, it’s a helluva town! The Bronx is up but the Battery’s also up because they both run on anti-gravity now! Haha, oh my sides. Please excuse my very whimsical Broadway introduction to Aether & Iron, a sci-fantasy RPG from an alternate 1930s in which New York has taken a turn for the Bioshock Infinite, soaring through the clouds care of fancy “aether” technology.
It’s inspired by art deco and 1930s detective comics, features a turn-based combat system involving getaway cars, and is the work of a team that includes former Ubisoft scribe Justin Cummings. Here’s a trailer.
Watch on YouTube
In Aether & Iron you play an offensively stylish smuggler who sports the kind of trenchcoat and fedora combination I dream of pulling off, but which typically makes me look as though I’ve gotten dressed at a themepark giftshop while escaping a flood. Using what appears to be a blend of ornate map screens, visual novel backdrops and workshop menus, you’ll recruit a crew and carry contraband while building up three core stats – Hustle, Smarts, and Brass.
“No matter how good you are always a dice roll away from success or failure,” the blurb cautions. I imagine they lose a lot of dice up there in giddy, free-floating New York. The city’s tabletop role-players must be an absolute plague on the people living beneath – imagine being killed by a D20 dropped from 10 miles up. But I digress.
In the course of making a tidy haul on the seedy side of the tracks, you will also have the opportunity to “rise as a savior, withdraw as a renegade, or evolve into a symbol of resilience in a world of authoritarian barons and high-stakes strategy”. Whichever route you pick, it sounds like there will be plenty of car chases. The game’s aether-powered roadsters can be outfitted with smoke dispensers, flame throwers, steel plates and grenade launchers. Going by the trailer above, the vehicular battles are grid-based with the quirk that the splitting of the road might divide one driver from the rest.
Aether & Iron appeals to me partly because they’ve successfully rolled one of those D20s and conquered the urge to label it “aetherpunk”. Well done, developers Seismic Squirrel! That was a close one. I also quite enjoy the snippets I’ve caught of the writing from the trailer. You can read more on Steam.
