I have rarely felt as overwhelmed starting a demo as I did with Iron Nest.
And before you roll your eyes at the word "simulator" - this one is not boring. You have to think, you have to do some actual maths, and somehow that turns out to be the fun part.
Quick verdict up front: this is a genuinely good, genuinely unusual little dieselpunk artillery game, made by just two developers. It is rough in places and badly needs a tutorial, but the core idea is fascinating. The free demo is worth a look.
Now the details.
You are not the gun. You are the maths.
Firing a big gun is easy. Pointing it vaguely at something and hoping is basically human history.
Iron Nest is about the awkward part before that.
You operate a giant artillery turret in 1920s Castille, where the monarchy is clinging on and a rebellion is slowly boiling over. Orders arrive from High Command via typewriter, and you are expected to know exactly what you are doing.
Which is bold of them.
Because you are the one doing the maths. Spotters give you rough hints, you triangulate the target, work out distance and bearing, walk over to the next machine, calculate elevation, load the shell, set everything, and finally shoot.
And then you wait. This turret is heavy and turns at its own leisurely pace.
So you grab a coffee in your quarters. Read the newspaper they hand you after a mission. Look out of the window. Then go back to ruining someone's afternoon with high explosives.
It is odd. It is also weirdly satisfying.
The part that frustrated me
The game does not really explain its tools.
As someone who had no idea what an AP or an HE shell even is, I spent a fair amount of time committing accidental war crimes against my own people.
I am not asking for hand-holding on everything. I like figuring things out, and the setting is great to poke around in.
But handing me a giant artillery turret and quietly hoping for the best is a lot. A short intro - what I am doing here, which lever does what, which shell not to fire over my own troops - would have gone a long way.
Loud, dieselpunk, and oddly immersive
Iron Nest is loud. And by loud I mean LOUD.
Everything clanks and groans, and nothing beats that first earth-shaking blast when you finally fire. If the noise gets to you, there are switches and levers to quiet parts of it down.
The visuals absolutely sell the setting. Pretty quickly you get the feeling you are not leaving this machine any time soon - just a small cog in something much bigger. There is a bit of story through the newspapers between missions, and a leaderboard if you only care about the numbers.
So, is it worth it?
Yes, with a few asterisks.
It is complicated, it is rough at the start, and I would love to actually know how I ended up in that turret. I hope the full version explains it.
But this does not smell like one of those off-the-shelf asset-flip sims. Two people clearly put real thought into it. It is niche, but it is the good kind of niche.
The demo is free as part of Steam Next Fest. Link is below, go give it a go - and maybe study the instructions a little harder than I did.