ITER-8 Review for Steam

ITER-8, developed by fluckyMachine and published by Fireshine Games, is a base-building roguelike with a minimalist aesthetic focusing on providing the player a clearer understanding of the world around them. The main focus of the game is the tower the player has to ascend through in a mining vehicle and collect special items tied to progression. With the narrative and sound design being complementary, they offer a setting for the game to build itself upon as they heighten the player’s overall immersion. Overall, the game does not feel clunky at all, and with how efficient people can be, it will be exciting to see how far they can go on the first try.

Gameplay focuses on the smooth transition of farming for resources, tower defense, and roguelike elements. A major point of contention as to how ITER-8 blends all these elements together is quite simple: it’s through simplifying specific gameplay elements. Farming resources is through mining blocks in the tower to get the game’s in-game currency in order to get upgrades. These upgrades come in the form of increased movement speed for the mining vehicle and weapon damage for the base, and shields are a few that come to mind in regard to importance to the base. Other than that, these upgrades are also tied to the roguelike elements in the game, as with every run, players can upgrade their base to perform better, as ITER-8 is more of a long-term investment as they reach the very end of the game as players will try to unravel some of the mystery behind the tower itself.

And to go back on track, the tower defense portion of ITER-8 has the player man a turret with additional automated turrets as long as the player can obtain the defense cubes. Furthermore, these defense cubes can be rolled into varying turrets to defend the base, allowing players to have some form of support in defending their base. This is in due part to how some enemies are going to swarm the base with different means of attacking, with a majority of them coming in from the ground, so it’s important to be strategic. The placement of these defenses can make fighting enemies so much easier, so making sure certain automated turrets overlap with one another and are placed in key spots ensures maximum effect.

With these two prominent gameplay mechanics, the addition of roguelike adds a nice twist to the mix and allows each run to feel unique, especially with the possible upgrades at hand. Designing the game this way allows players to experiment in strategies and varying builds as to maximize efficiency.

In regard to ITER-8, it’s really fun and offers such a unique take on not just the roguelike genre but tower defense, as there are not too many games that are defined by the two genres. Moreover, with the gameplay taking up a majority of the player’s attention, the more hands-on mechanics stemming from tower defense allow for a better sense of immersion. While the game’s narrative and sound might feel like they are in the background, they still are an important part of ITER-8 for informing the player as to what is happening. Furthermore, this form of narrative background is not too dissimilar to some of the more Souls-like games. All in all, ITER-8 relies on its gameplay to keep the player, and that by itself is great, especially when players get into the loop. So I rate the game itself is a solid 8/10.

For more information and to get the game, visit Steam.

Related: Reviews by Kyle Manila

Kyle Manila

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I would describe myself when interacting with games as a strategist with a pension for stealth and loud explosions.