"The war is becoming complicated... A true nightmare... The last bit of the old world is now lost. The line between soldier and civilian... should never have been crossed..."
from the trailer
of Iron Grip: The Oppression
of Iron Grip: The OppressionIron Grip was a video game franchise created by the now-defunct indie game developer ISOTX, consisting of four loosely-connected projects sharing the same fictional universe. Set in the Steampunk (but aesthetically Dieselpunk-flavored) fictional planet of Theia, the Iron Grip universe was a surprisingly believable mixture of:
- Greek tragedies,note
- Feudalist Middle Age societies,
- The art and architecture of The Renaissance period,
- The power struggles of the Thirty Years' War,
- The military tactics of the Napoleonic era,
- And finally, weapons and combat vehicles inspired by the two World Wars.
, providing plenty of flavor material on Theia's geography, culture and history, along with short stories set in the universe.The franchise consisted of the following games:
- Iron Grip: The Oppression, a 2006 Asymmetric Multiplayer Total Conversion for Half-Life 2, featuring guerrilla warfare combat in a combined First-Person Shooter / Real-Time Strategy gameplay mix. Set in the country of Kathos occupied by the Rahmos Protectorate, the mod pitted local resistance fighters against the occupying Rahmos garrison. While resistance players fought in a co-op FPS mode, the Rahmos side had a player (or a couple of players in larger matches) roleplay as an officer, commanding AI garrison units in RTS mode to crush the rebellion. Although the mod files are still available on ModDB, The Oppression is otherwise considered dead, due to the lack of active servers and players.
- Iron Grip: Warlord, a 2008 single-player / co-op video game (and the commercial sequel /
Spiritual Successor of The Oppression) built on a heavily-modified id Tech 3 engine. While the game reused the premise of The Oppression (pitting a rag-tag bunch of guerilla fighters against an invading superpower - this time, the Confederation of Nallum, called the "Fahrong" or the "Confederates" in-game), Warlord dropped the ability to play as the invaders in RTS mode, but introduced Tower Defense mechanics to the resistance side, allowing players to build traps and upgradable defense structures against the attacking AI forces. As in case of The Oppression, Warlord is primarily geared for online co-op gameplay, but unlike its predecessor, it can also be played solo with allied bots. The game was originally sold on Steam and ISOTX's web site, but now can be fetched from the Internet Archive . In 2024, a fan revival project was announced for the game, with a team formed on Discord to keep a dedicated online community alive and to potentially develop future content updates for Warlord via modding. - Iron Grip: Lords of War (previously Lords of Atelia), a 2010 free-to-play multiplayer browser game which served as a sequel to Warlord and depicted the power struggle between the various Atelian tribes following the Fahrong withdrawal. The game shut down in early 2014.
- Iron Grip: Marauders, a 2011 free-to-play online turn-based strategy game running on the Unity engine. Set after the events of Lords of War, it focused on the airborne marauders of Theia, allowing players to create their own airship captains, build their factions and then fight for resources and territory either with or against other players. The game went offline in 2014.
The studio also released March of War, another free-to-play online turn-based strategy game in 2011. However, that game was set in an alternative 1940s instead of the Iron Grip universe (and thus, switched out the Steampunk setting in favor of a more traditional alternative Dieselpunk Earth premise). For the tropes seen in that game, see its dedicated page.
Unfortunately, ISOTX founder and creative lead Vincent van Geel left the company in 2014, resulting in the studio dissolving in 2015 and their projects either becoming Abandonware or shutting down permanently.
"Open these folders, rebel scum, or you won't hit the tropeside of an airship!"
open/close all folders
General Iron Grip tropes
- A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...: While the "long time" part might not be true (given that it's unknown when the games are set relative to Earth's history), the "far-far away" aspect of the setting is fully in effect. According to the universe's archived online encyclopedia, Theia is located in a distant solar system known as Solaria, and orbits around a young G2-class star in the nebula of an ancient supernova.
- Aerith and Bob: While the games and short stories have plenty of characters with Slavic-, French-, German-, Greek-, English-, or Arabic-sounding names that wouldn't be out of place on Earth (Tarkov, Charles, Gretchen, Persephone, Marcus, Sahrab and so on), we also have characters known as Dietroch or Richar.
- All-or-Nothing Reloads: Played straight with most weapons, but notably averted with the Chimera shotgun of Warlord, which you can fire as long as you have at least a single buckshot in its barrel.
- All There in the Manual / Expanded Universe: And how! To their credit, ISOTX took the Worldbuilding of their games rather seriously, with the manuals providing plenty of backstory, while the online encyclopedia described Theia's geography, culture and history in great detail. The website also contained several comics and short stories loosely connected to the video games.
- Anachronism Stew: Just◊ take◊ a look◊ at the◊ clothes◊, armour◊ and weaponry◊ of the various soldiers◊. While the setting might visually adhere to the Purely Aesthetic Era trope, it actually ends up as a rather captivating and unique take on the Steampunk genre.
- Cannon Fodder: The Rahmos City Guard forces in The Oppression and the Confederate conscripts in Warlord play this trope to the letter. It is not uncommon to have a single player massacre dozens of them at once during battles.
- Constructed World: Let's just say that the archived online encyclopedia provides an obscene amount of detail about the setting, from the description of the star system where Theia is located through details about the planet's geography and physical parameters up to and including the culture and history of the local human civilization.
- Crapsack World: The planet of Theia is certainly not for the faint of the heart.
- In general, the short stories and the flavor material of the games make it quite clear that the planet is in a constant state of war, due to the power-hungry ambitions of its countries' corrupt rulers and nobility.
- The Oppression and Warlord are both about freedom fighters in a small country taking up arms against the occupying force of a much larger superpower in a near-hopeless rebellion.
- Warlord and Lords of Atelia also take the previous theme further by giving the noble freedom fighter trope a strong kick in the gut. In Warlord, the game's manual and the map loading screens make it clear that the path to the revolution's success leads through the blood of innocent civilians, as Warlord Sahrab attempts to start an uprising by provoking the mass bombardment of Atelian city-states, killing thousands of local civilians in the process. Lords of Atelia, on the other hand, showed that the successful uprising triggered by Sahrab only made things worse in the long run, as the departure of the Fahrong occupiers left the country at the mercy of bickering resistance cells and warlords, hell-bent on defeating their rivals, securing as much spoils as possible, and becoming the only true warlord of the country.
- Custom Uniform: Given the setting and the game's art style in general, it should not be surprising that this trope is in full effect.
- The resistance fighters in The Oppression and Warlord use civilian clothing and traditional outfits respectively, outfitted with hand-made belts, holsters and vests.
- The officers and generals of the Rahmos and Fahrong empires sport Napoleonic bicorne hats, commissar caps reminiscent of The Great War, and numerous amounts of Bling of War.
- Days of Future Past: The premise of the universe can certainly fare as such. After all, it's a world that effortlessly blends the societal structure of The Middle Ages with Renaissance architecture, Napoleonic era politics and military strategies, and finally, weapons and Steampunk vehicles aesthetically inspired by the two World Wars. Compared to Earth, Theia's present is a past that never happened here.
- Decapitated Army: Played straight in The Oppression and downplayed in Warlord, although both projects rely on a gameplay mechanic based on troop morale and the presence of officers commanding the invading armies.
- In The Oppression, both the Rahmos City Guard and the Resistance factions can boost their own morale (and simultaneously keep lowering the morale of the opposing side) by capturing control points on the map, with the faction whose morale first dropping to zero losing the match. The system, however, also has a Keystone Army aspect in place, as killing the player-controlled Rahmos officer(s) results in the Resistance immediately winning the match, even if their morale was lower than that of the Rahmos faction's at that point in time.
- In Warlord, the Confederate faction slowly gains morale by killing resistance troops, destroying resistance structures, and simply having an active officer on the map. On the other hand, the players' side can slowly improve morale by killing Confederate forces, greatly improve morale by rebuilding their destroyed Stronghold, and nosedive Confederate morale by killing enemy officers (after which, however, a new officer is sent in after a couple minutes, averting the Keystone Army trope of The Oppression). Killing officers is so important in Warlord on higher difficulties that players cannot win the match at all if they do not hunt down at least half a dozen of them.
- Defunct Online Video Games: As Lords of War and Marauders were online-only entries to the franchise, they became completely unavailable once they were shut down in 2014.
- The Empire: The Rahmos Protectorate in The Oppression and the Confederation of Nallum in Warlord. The latter is essentially the Expy of Rahmos with a "religious fanatic" streak to them. In The Oppression, Rahmos is playable in RTS mode, while in Warlord, the Fahrong is an AI-only faction.
- Expansion Pack World: Naturally, the game's universe was expanded with each new game entry into the series.
- Iron Grip: The Oppression introduced the universe and its basic premise, and focused on the struggle of the Rahmos Protectorate and the Kathos resistance.
- Iron Grip: Warlord introduced Atelia and its society (consisting of its nomadic tribes and citystate-dwellers) and the Fahrong faction, in war with the Rahmos Protectorate and Atelia.
- Iron Grip: Lords of War introduced additional Atelian units, weapons and combat vehicles that were either not seen before, or were only present previously as non-functional map props, wrecks, or on concept art pieces.
- Iron Grip: Marauders introduced the new marauder faction, essentially air pirates working either with or against other marauders for their own gains.
- Fackler Scale of FPS Realism: The FPS gameplay in The Oppression and Warlord falls somewhere in the middle in this regard, since the RTS elements of the former and the Tower Defense gameplay of the latter force a more arcade-ish approach. While gunplay is rather realistic and each firearm has its own strengths and weaknesses (for example, light machine guns must be deployed on a bipod before shooting, while the sub-machinegun and the musket should be used with aiming down sights in a crouched position to improve accuracy), players can still run around much quicker than AI-controlled troops and can also bunnyhop to get where they need to go (likely to compensate their disadvantage in numbers). Experienced players might also score No Scope hits with the Falcon Sniper Rifle in Warlord (even though it is really inaccurate).
- The RTS controls of The Oppression feature a typical Command & Conquer Economy, while the Tower Defense aspects of Warlord work off some Easy Logistics (considering that we can convert popular support - represented by the Power resource - into new weapons, various traps, machine gun nests or anti-vehicle emplacements seemingly anywhere and anytime, as long as we have the required amount of it).
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Rarely played straight, since the various countries and ethnicities inhabiting Theia tend to be one giant - yet still believable - Culture Chop Suey of various cultures and civilizations from many different geographic areas and eras of human history. As far as possible analogies go:
- Rahmos is a somewhat Putting on the Reich version of either Prussia or Imperial Germany, Tsarist Russia and the USSR, coupled with general anti-religious sentiments.
- Mercos, Torun, Garados and other Rahmos Protectorate States are the mixtures of Medieval merchant republics, Hanseatic city states, Victorian Britain and Napoleonic-era Europe.
- Syreden is a small, mountainous, Western European-like country similar to Switzerland or the former duchy of Burgundy, and it is the originator of the religion which served as the basis for Fahrong's Crystal Dragon Jesus. It is also the apparent Hufflepuff House of the setting.
- Atelia is an Expy of the Caucasus, Siberia and Tibet, inhabited both by citystate-dwellers and nomadic quasi-Tuareg-Cossack-Sami tribes. The freedom fighters we play as in Warlord also act as a slightly deconstructed take on the Proud Warrior Race Guy trope.
- Fahrong (The Confederation of Nallum) is a fusion of the Holy Roman Empire, Napoleonic France, the Byzantine Empire and an overflow of religious fanaticism (that even boasts self-flagellating suicide bombers!)
- Fantasy Gun Control: Averted and subverted at the same time. As firearms and combat vehicles are relatively new additions to Theia's battlefields, there are plenty of archaic melee weaponry around, in line with the franchise's theme of "warfare with early-20th century technology in an otherwise medieval-flavored world".
- Forever War: Fully applies to Theia. Petty conflicts and major wars between the Theian nations have been dragging on in one way or another for entire centuries. Many have their roots in millenia-old disputes.
- Grim Up North: Theia is a much more mountainous planet than Earth, with dramatically rugged terrain, unpredictable weather and an overall colder global climate.
- Nearly every country appearing in the setting has at least a few snow-filled landscapes.
- Hold the Line: The basic premise of The Oppression and Warlord. They nearly revel in this trope (especially Warlord). This◊ piece of concept art speaks for itself - it's even titled The Last Stand...
- Hollywood Tactics: Both the Rahmos and Fahrong armies love storming your cities in The Oppression and Warlord in the most over-the-top fashion possible. Needless to say, their attacks rarely pay off.
- Hyperspace Arsenal: Played straight both in The Oppression and Warlord, with players easily able to carry more than half a dozen different guns and tools at once.
- Improvised Weapon: Both in The Oppression and Warlord, our tiny band of resistance fighters utilize whatever they can to fight the invading armies numbering in the thousands. Interestingly, besides the obligatory Molotov cocktails, home-made explosives and custom firearms (like the starting musket of Warlord), flavor material specifically mentions that the 40RTE anti-tank rocket launcher of The Oppression and Warlord is also custom-made by the Kathos resistance (instead of being a factory-produced weapon, as its appearance would otherwise suggest).
- Kill It with Fire: The resistance fighters of The Oppression and Warlord certainly love this trope. Tools to fire up enemy troops include the Molotov Cocktail and trusty flamethrowers in both games. While human players can dish out a respectable amount of damage with these tools, the somewhat wobbly allied AI in Warlord often uses Molotov cocktails to cause unintended Incendiary Exponent. Warlord takes this roster further with:
- Stacks of fuel-filled barrels as a deployable trap (for the enemy to hit or be paired with tripwire bombs).
- The Chimera shotgun that can also fire incendiary dragon's breath shells as its secondary attack.
- A single-use rocket launcher with an incendiary warhead, available as a random map spawn if the Scorched Earth DLC is installed.
- Leet Lingo: The portable anti-tank rocket launcher in The Oppression and Warlord is spelled as 40RTE, and pronounced as FORTY, likely referring to the weapon's caliber.
- Low Fantasy: Theia is a fictional, very Earth-like planet, with the only differences being somewhat altered laws of physics (to enable Rule of Cool technology) and a few Sea Monster creatures (also tamed for transportation). Theians are, for all intents and purposes, normal, everyday humans. Flora and fauna is also generally Earth-like, if quite a bit smeerpy. Superhuman powers, such as magic or psychic means are completely non-existent in the Iron Grip world.
- Medieval Stasis: Averted, as "Schizo Tech and Anachronism Stew Stasis" would probably be a more appropriate term. While things like motor vehicles, Steampunk walkers, aircraft and zeppelins exist in the setting, flavor material suggests that they have been invented fairly recently. However, it is also implied that "fairly recently" means that they have been known for several centuries already and that technological breakthroughs take considerably more time to be achieved in Theia compared to Earth. This is all possibly justified with a Little Ice Age that seemingly affects the setting.
- More Dakka: Frequently occurs with the Praetorian deployable light machine gun both in The Oppression and Warlord. Given the capacity of its box magazine and the typical size of Rahmos and Fahrong armies, players wielding the Praetorian have plenty of opportunities and targets to shoot.
- Taken up to eleven in Warlord if players can get a hold of a slain officer's minigun. While the weapon is automatically dropped once its magazine dried up, it is always loaded with 250 rounds of rifle-caliber ammunition when picking it up, which is more than enough to completely wipe out either an entire Fahrong attack wave (sans vehicles), or the next officer...
- Occupiers Out of Our Country: The core premise of The Oppression and Warlord, with local resistance fighters taking up arms against the invading Rahmos and Fahrong forces, respectively.
- Real Is Brown: While some of the levels in The Oppression and Warlord play this straight (such as the first map of Warlord, "The Spiral"), most of them (such as the snowy or night-time levels) subvert this in some way, while still remaining gritty and dilapidated in appearance.
- Several levels in The Oppression cross more into the "Real Is Cold-Looking Dusky Winter Blue Hue" territory.
- Red Shirt Army: The Rahmos City Guard troops of The Oppression and the Fahrong conscripts◊ of Warlord fall into this category. Seriously, lone players can kill these guys in droves.
- Frankly, the whole Confederate army in Warlord suffers the same fate. Which is understandable, since Fahrong military tactics seem to boil down to Attack! Attack! Attack! and We Have Reserves.
- Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Many vehicles and weapons play this trope straight:
- In The Oppression, the Rahmos garrisons use the "Raccoon" armoured car and the standard "Dingo" tank.
- In Warlord, resistance fighters use the "Chimera" shotgun, the "Salamander" flamethrower, the "Praetorian" light machine gun, and the "Falcon" Sniper Rifle. At the same time, the Confederates use "Scarab" troop transport vehicles and steam-powered walkers called "arachs", with the names of various spider species or arthropods.
- A flying warship in one of the Expanded Universe stories (and in the "Bay End" map of Warlord) bears the proud name of "Sedales Serpent".
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Let's just say that the Iron Grip universe is quite far towards the cynical end of the scale, considering that the playable characters of the games are anti-heroes at best and outright villain protagonists at worst. Just to summarize, the roster consists of ruthless resistance fighters in The Oppression, freedom fighters sacrificing their own cities and fellow citizens to spark a rebellion in Warlord, bickering warlords fighting for the ruins of their country in Lords of War and opportunist sky pirates in Marauders.
- Standard Sci-Fi Army: The units appearing in the games cover most of the traditional categories.
- The guerilla fighters (be they Kathosian townspeople or Atelian nomads) are mostly irregular infantry and civilians, have very little in the way of vehicles, but own some packhorses, mounts, and stationary defenses, along with plenty of makeshift and stolen weapons.
- The standing armies of Rahmos and the Fahrong are predictably more numerous, have diverse infantry units (including conscripts, shock troops, riot units, grenadiers, rocketeers, or flamers), armoured cars, troop transport vehicles, tanks, trains, and steam-powered walkers.
- Air forces are in service only in wealthier countries or for marauders and are generally well-equipped with fighters, small bombers, airships, drop ships and gunships.
- The closest things to super soldiers are the Fahrongi officers◊, members of a specially-bred caste of Fahrong society, who also undergo a Training from Hell organized by their country's Church Militant. Besides being frontline commanders, they also serve as The Political Officer, boosting the morale of their troops (which directly translates to a key gameplay element in Warlord).
- Both the Fahrongi army and the Atelian resistance uses suicide bombers as terror units.
- Steampunk: The Iron Grip setting could be summed up in short as: A mostly rustic world of nearly endless winters meeting industrial Punk Punk, flying battleships, steam-powered war machines and human civilizations constantly at war with each other.
- Given the Anachronism Stew-heavy looks of the games' universe, the term "mishmashpunk" wouldn't really be out of place either.
- As Kieron Gillen put it in his Rock Paper Shotgun first look:
- "It kind of recalls a magicless The Red Star."
- Tank Goodness: Most of the armoured vehicles in both games aim for a Rule of Cool look at least as much as for a realistic visage. See for yourself...
- As Vincent van Geel, ISOTX's head and design lead put it, the design of the Steampunk combat vehicles was mainly inspired by "World War 2, as it was a time of uncertainty and experimentation in terms of military hardware. The idea was to take out the negative Nazi-element from them, allowing for free-reign in terms of story and factions."
- As Vincent van Geel, ISOTX's head and design lead put it
- Tunnel Network: Almost every The Oppression and Warlord level is full of these, to allow the resistance faction quick and smooth movement between key map areas. However, in Warlord, enemy troops can also use these shortcuts to bypass the players' defenses. One of the map descriptions also handwaves this.
- Standard FPS Guns: Played mostly straight in The Oppression and Warlord (just see the concept art◊ for some of the weapons in the latter), though not without a few subversions.
- Some of the guns have rather special secondary firing modes, such as the Chimera shotgun firing incendiary dragon's breath shells, or the flamethrower being able to spray fuel which can be then ignited separately as a trap.
- One of the starting guns in Warlord is a Cool, but Inefficient breech-loading Atelian musket, which can hold a single bullet and has a lengthy reload time after each shot. While it can one-shot most regular enemies, the slow rate of fire still makes the weapon rather impractical, considering the number of enemies rushing against the resistance at any given time.
- Used Future: The setting fits this trope to a tee. The overall look of all the military and civilian tech makes it often hard to decide whether they are truly old, rusty and battered or deliberately steampunkish-looking.
- Urban Warfare: Most of the maps in The Oppression and Warlord take place in occupied or besieged cities and fortresses. A lot of them are also... not in a particularly good shape.
- War Is Hell: While not explicitly discussed in any of the games, it is certainly shown more than enough, making it the main Aesop of the franchise.
- Zeppelins from Another World: Whoa...◊ Once◊ again◊ - in spades! They're more like a cross between a rigid airship and a World War I dreadnought.
- Several missions in The Oppression involve the Resistance trying to complete their objectives before Zeppelin-Dreadnoughts turn the entire area they're in into a crater. Warlord reuses this premise, but it's played with / subverted in an interesting fashion (see Genghis Gambit later among the Warlord tropes).
- Zerg Rush: The basic tactic of the attacking armies in The Oppression and Warlord, with the Fahrong ones taking this to ruthless and unbelievable levels in the latter. Let's put it this way: Even Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Benito Mussolini would be horrified at what passes for Confederate tactics.
Iron Grip: The Oppression tropes
- Asymmetric Multiplayer: The main selling point of the mod. While the gameplay revolves around capturing and holding control points (similarly to, for example, Day of Defeat or the Domination mode of Unreal Tournament), the familiar premise is subverted with the different perspectives of the opposing forces. While resistance players can fight out matches in FPS mode, Rahmos players can command their AI garrison in RTS mode - but can also participate in combat in FPS mode, if they want. The latter gives a "high risk, high reward" flavor to the match for the Rahmos side, as participating Rahmos officers can greatly speed up the capture time of enemy or neutral control points, but will immediately lose the match if they get killed by the resistance.
- La Résistance: The FPS side is called, unsurprisingly, "The Resistance".
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Nearly all of the resistance fighters have a Dark and Troubled Past. Some are anti-heroes while others are knights in sour armor. Here's the Cast Calculus:
- The Captain: Kanrid Marx (although he holds the rank of Major within the resistance)
- The Lancer: Dietroch Wolding (formerly an average dock worker, before he Took a Level in Badass)
- The Smart Guy / Badass Bookworm: Charles Debois and Persephone Diarra
- The Big Guy: Marcus Tylios (ranging between Type 2-4)
- Mr. Fixit / Badass Normal: Ronius Diagran
- Ensign Newbie: Cal Malgrun
- Fragile Speedster / Sixth Ranger: Richar Buitine (a rich Heroic Wannabe who is also Uncle Pennybags, since he secretly supports the Kathos resistance with cash and equipment)
- Action Girl: Florence Suivant (who is also a Broken Bird)
- The Squadette / Loveable Rogue: Gretchen Stoertebellor
- Vestigial Empire: The story of Kathos, in short. It was once an independent kingdom, until a Civil War broke out between the heirs to the throne. The war ended in an indecisive stalemate, with competing brothers Mercos and Garados usurping different parts of the empire. The brothers replaced the former capital of Torun with two newly-founded cities, both named after them. Several millennia of ludicrous infighting later, Kathos became a balkanized region of wealthy and powerful, but ultimately quarrelling city-states. Eventually, thanks to another Civil War and calling in the neighboring empire to pacify the region, they all fell prey to Rahmos - becoming the aptly named Rahmos Protectorate States.
Iron Grip: Warlord tropes
- Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Certain aspects of the gameplay strongly rely on Gameplay and Story Segregation to balance out the huge difference in numbers between the Atelian and Fahrong factions.
- In general, players and Atelian bots have more health than most Confederate troops, and can also move a lot faster by default than the invading army - so much so, that players can even bunny-hop their way around the combat zone to quickly get where they need to be. In addition, both the base health and movement speed can be upgraded further via the in-game shop.
- The only resource of the Atelian freedom fighters is Power, explained as being the representation of popular support towards the Atelian resistance, allowing players to equip weapons or equipment out of thin air and build traps or defense structures in a similar fashion. While the amount of Power slowly increases every second and players are also rewarded with some for every enemy troop they kill, they can get a lot more of it at once by destroying vehicles, killing Confederate officers, collecting gold jewellery scattered around the map, or engaging enemies from behind cowering civilians to have the Confederates accidentally kill them. As the last option always rewards as much Power as taking out an enemy mecha, players are more or less forced to sacrifice civilians on higher difficulties in case of unfavorable gold spawns to get the amount of Power necessary to survive the early-game onslaught.
- Resistance bots and players respawn after death near the Stronghold. Lore-wise, this is explained as resistance cells consisting of more warriors than the maximum player count - for example, the intermission screen of the "Kham's Last Stand" map states that about 500 Atelian freedom fighters died in the bombardment of the map. Whenever a player dies, story-wise they just simply take control of another Atelian combatant.
- Defense structures (machine gun nests and anti-tank emplacements) can shoot through each other without causing any damage, so players don't have to plan their locations with their size and potential obstructions in mind.
- Action Bomb / Suicide Attack: The Winter Offensive update of the game introduced this both for the enemy and player factions.
- The Fahrong roster was expanded with fanatics who are armed with a single pistol and a suicide vest, and are more than happy to use the latter to blow resistance fighters and structures to smithereens once they run out of ammo for the former (or they take a certain amount of damage). Players can only survive their explosion if they have all Health upgrades unlocked and haven't taken any damage beforehand.
- The Atelian side, at the same time, can make use of suicide vests available as random map pick-ups on most levels either as an early-game way to dish out hefty amounts of damage, or as a last-ditch effort to take out Confederate officers and larger groups of enemies near the Stronghold.
- The Fahrong roster was expanded with fanatics who are armed with a single pistol and a suicide vest, and are
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Justified both story- and gameplay-wise. Lore material specifically states that the majority of Confederate attack waves consist of conscripts whose strength lies in their numbers instead of the training they received. At the same time, making most enemy troops in the main attack waves inaccurate also serves balance purposes, to make sure that players can actually perform Hit-and-Run Tactics against them without being shredded to pieces as soon as they appear in the enemy's line of sight.
- Notably averted with the Confederate officers◊ and the specialist troops◊ (flamers, riot soldiers, rocketeers, and so on) who roam the maps separate from the main attack waves, often as the protection detail of said officers. They can put up a serious fight, especially at the early-game part of matches when players have only a limited amount of weapons and skills unlocked.
- Somewhat zig-zagged with the Confederate Templars who have been added to main attack waves with the Winter Offensive update. While their gatling guns are not accurate, they are deadly with their grenade launchers, able to hit players even from great distances when noticing them.
- Notably averted with the Confederate officers
- Artificial Brilliance: The Confederate officers and the specialized Fahrong troops certainly have shades of this.
- Once they arrive, officers regularly change their positions and try staying away from the main attack paths to avoid major chokepoints where they might run into the players' machine gun nests and anti-tank towers. Consequently, they also indirectly force players to leave their defenses and the vicinity of the Stronghold to hunt them down.
- Special troops (like the flamers, rocketeers, or riot soldiers) and the suicidal fanatics also favor the Tunnel Network of the maps to move around undetected and ambush unsuspecting defenders in their hinterland. The fanatics are especially serious offenders in this regard, as they can quickly destroy low-level defense structures, forcing players to quickly develop a habit to build traps and lay mines at nearby exit points.
- Artificial Stupidity: Applies to most NPCs, allied and enemy alike.
- The enemy troops and vehicles comprising the Fahrong attack waves are programmed to follow predefined attack paths, regardless of the amount of punishment they receive from the Atelian resistance while on route. This means that they keep charging ahead on their set path even if they face activated traps (such as canisters actively blowing poisonous gases) or a barrage of Atelian machine gun nests ahead of them. This is justified though for gameplay balance reasons, to ensure that players can reliably plan the placement of defense structures in line with general Tower Defense gameplay mechanics.
- Unfortunately, our allied AI companions are next to useless in solo gameplay, as players cannot give them orders, they never follow players around to provide backup or act as distraction, and they cannot build defense structures either. Also, even though they can use several weapons (the musket, the shotgun, the sub-machinegun, and even the anti-tank launcher), most of the time they prefer throwing around Molotovs, often blowing themselves up with it in the process. Their pathing is also quite limited, as they cannot navigate the network of tunnels and shortcuts prevalent on each map. In short, they are nothing more than moving targets for the Confederates, leaving it to players to build up effective defenses and hunt down the officers to deplete Confederate morale (resulting in the game's Nintendo Hard difficulty above Medium in single player mode).
- Awesome Personnel Carrier: The first couple of enemy attack waves feature one or more S54 Scarab◊ troop transport vehicles (their number depending on the difficulty level). While we never actually see the Scarabs deploying any troops, their machine guns make them an efficient infantry support vehicle, and a legitimate threat in the early-game phase of the battle. After the first couple of rounds though, they are superseded by tanks and mechas (with the exception of the Bunker map, where they appear throughout the entire round).
- Interestingly, according to official concept art, the Scarab has flamethrower and command post variants as well in the lore, besides the machine gun-equipped version we see in-game.
- Interestingly, according to official concept art
- Bittersweet Ending: Applies to every map, as each level ends with the Confederates levelling the entire area via aerial bombardment. However, these instances of crushing defeat are paradoxically also steps towards an against-all-odds victory in the long run, as every battle of the game is actually part of a wider cunning plan...
- Boring, but Practical: The Vampire sub-machinegun. While it's the cheapest weapon available to buy in the in-game menu, it still has a decent rate of fire, accuracy and damage, making it an ideal tool to dispose of smaller groups of Confederate troops in close-to-mid range engagements. It is an obvious step-up from the default knife, pistol, musket and Molotov Cocktail the players start the matches with, and its fire rate and reload speed can even be tweaked further by buying Damage upgrades.
- Boss Banter: The Confederate officers will give occasional taunts in the game chat every once in a while. Their banter certainly stands out, due their names appearing blue rather than the usual red.
- Captain Obvious: Earlier versions of the game often had the matches start with someone (likely Warlord Sahrab himself) declare our brave and grizzled guerilla squad that "We are losing the city...". While this was likely a glitch, it was funny enough to become an Ascended Glitch.
- Character Title: Warlord in the game's title most likely refers to Warlord Sahrab, considering that players impersonate rank-and-file members of the Atelian resistance (and none of the in-game material suggests that they'd be promoted anywhere above that by the end of the campaign).
- Continuity Nod: Warlord contains plenty of references to The Oppression - which is not surprising, considering their Shared Universe.
- The premise of Warlord is nearly the same as The Oppression: taking on the garrisons of an occupying army with a small unit of freedom fighters.
- Several weapons from The Oppression reappear in Warlord, such as the Praetorian machine gun or the 40RTE rocket launcher. While the former is described to be brought into Atelia by Rahmos sponsors, the latter is stated to be a newer and improved version of the launcher used in The Oppression.
- The game manual states that the Falcon Sniper Rifle is actively used by Rahmos special forces, and was likely sent to South Atelia via the same Rahmos sponsors who supplied the Praetorian light machine guns.
- There are plenty of hints (such as the maps shown on loading screens) which suggest that the events of Warlord and The Oppression are either taking place concurrently, or at least in a very close time frame.
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: The Trithinite faith of the Confederation of Nallum certainly qualifies as such. Originated in the south of the Kathos subcontinent (the primary setting of the Iron Grip universe), not much is known about the theological nature of this religion, except that its history seemingly mirrors the development of both Christianity and Islam in several ways, and that it recognizes a concept similar to reincarnation. Though not their original faith, Trithinism was embraced by the Fahrongi to the point where it became their state religion, and an excuse for waging crusades against all unbelievers. On the other hand, the Fahrong missionaries spreading the faith tend to be quite sensible, goodwilling and non-militant people.
- The trope is inverted by the other superpower of the Iron Grip world, Rahmos, whose inhabitants are educated to outgrow such silly superstitions and act as the Flat-Earth Atheists of the setting, embracing a... Crystal Dragon Quasi-Communist Ideology instead.
- Darker and Edgier: Compared to The Oppression, as evident by several lore and gameplay elements.
- Due to the Genghis Gambit of Warlord Sahrab, the aerial bombardment of various populous Atelian city-states is not only expected by the resistance, but is the actual goal they are working towards.
- Using civilians as human shields to provoke the Confederates to shoot them and cause Collateral Damage is not only not frowned upon by the game, but actually rewards players with extra in-game currency when it happens.
- The Ruins map (introduced with a later update as a smaller, more fast-paced take on the core gameplay) is a rather dark example of the Leave No Witnesses trope (and also deconstructs The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified trope to tiny shreds). As the map's loading screen clarifies, the player's cell has been deployed in that area specifically to force the Confederates to bomb the remaining civilians, as they witnessed how the resistance provoked the Fahrong to bomb their city during the previous battle.
- Although players lose a substantial amount of Power if they kill a civilian themselves, allied bots are always quick to point out that it is not the death of the civilian that bothers them - but rather the support they lost from the general populace because of it.
- Death from Above: Essentially the objective on every map. There are Fahrong air ships looming over every location, their cannons trained on the battlefield, eventually unleashing hell once players destroyed enough attack waves and killed so many officers that the Confederates are forced to retreat. While certainly a demotivating sight, it is all part of a greater plan.
- The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: You can quickly resupply the ammunition for a specific weapon on the spot if you sell and then re-buy the weapon via the in-game buy menu. However, to prevent players from exploiting this mechanic, the sell price of weapons is considerably lower than their buy price. As such, in the early-to-mid-game phase, when every fraction of Power counts, it is strongly recommended to resupply ammo at support stations instead.
- Elite Mooks: Besides the main attack waves, the game constantly spawns higher-tier units, such as flamer, shotgunner and grenadier troops, who roam the map apart from the main attack forces, often sneaking up behind the player's positions by using the Tunnel Network of the maps. Lore-wise, both these specialists and the Fahrong officer belong to the "Herrad Legionnaires" of the Confederate military.
- If the Scorched Earth DLC is installed, the game also spawns Confederate engineers and spies. The former can build automated rocket launcher platforms that launch chemical rockets to the players' structures every 90 seconds, while the spy can call in airstrikes to the players' buildings (which can be cancelled if players kill the spy within 40 seconds after calling in said airstrike). While only one engineer and spy can be active at once during matches, they respawn and re-enter with the next attack wave to the battlefield when killed.
- Fragile Speedster: Played straight by players at the beginning of a match, given that they move a lot faster than Confederate troops, but can still be killed relatively quickly by marching attack waves, their Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy training notwithstanding. However, players can slowly transform into a Lightning Bruiser later in the match, once they unlock all Health and Damage upgrades and buy most of the weapons.
- Genre Shift: Compared to The Oppression. While the preceding mod was an online Player Versus Player FPS / RTX mix, Warlord is firmly on the co-op FPS side, with the oppressing army being an AI-only faction, but the resistance side gaining Tower Defense gameplay components as a trade-off.
- Gallows Humour: Besides blowing themselves up with Molotovs, the Atelian resistance bots also reliably quip tongue-in-cheek comments about their current situation (especially when their Last Stand seems to be going to hell) and various events during match (such as the death of a Confederate officer). However, enemy officers also act in a similar fashion, belittling their soldiers and bossing them around all the time, or spouting Bloody Hilarious Bond one-liners after killing resistance members.
- Genghis Gambit: The main premise of the game, subverting the very reason for defending the various locations. Atelia is a ''very'' disunited country, so much so that local leaders have a hard time convincing the populace to rebel against the Fahrong occupation. To solve this problem, Sahrab devises a plan to deploy resistance cells to some of the already-doomed cities and historical sites to "defend them" from the Confederates, provoking them to wage urban combat, and causing enough casualties to eventually force the Fahrong to bomb the cities to oblivion along with the local populace. Sahrab hopes that by sacrificing enough settlements this way, surviving Atelians would become outraged enough to finally become eager to drive the Fahrongi out of their land. It's quite telling that Atelian rulers are desperate enough to try pulling off this idea, hoping that it might be Crazy Enough to Work.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: While the game is not particularly story-driven, the game's premise (described in the manual and on the map intermission screens) and certain gameplay elements (like the game rewarding the death of civilians used as human shields with bonus resources) make it pretty clear that the Atelian resistance is a deconstruction of the heroic revolutionary trope at best and a villain faction at worst, whose combatants are not so different from the Fahrong occupiers when it comes to valuing the lives of their fellow countrymen or the various historical Atelian sites.
- Humongous Mecha: Unlike the rest of the maps which feature only a smaller (but still quite deadly) walker type, the ST-35 Recluse◊, the attack waves of the last two levels ("Bay End" and "Mountain Retreat") occasionally feature a quite... imposing war machine, known as the ST-38 Warweaver. More on the Mighty Glacier side, this arach is somewhat slower than the Recluse, but is of course
armed to the teeth with machine guns, cannons and mortars as a trade-off, capable of effortlessly shredding resistance fighters and defense structures alike from medium and high ranges. Note that the lore calls the Warweaver a medium arach, as the Confederate military apparently also fields an even bigger model, the Widow◊ artillery unit. Unfortunately (?), the Widow does not appear in the game, but considering its existing art and lore description, it might have been planned to debut in an eventually scrapped game update. - Lampshade Hanging: The "Grand Maces Palace" and "Kham's Last Stand" levels feature not one, but two strongholds to protect for some reason. The map loading screen of the former simply handwaves this away by saying ''Do not ask why - you do not want to know!''
- Large Ham: The constantly grunting Fahrong officers (and their voice actor) revel in this trope, of course.
- Men Are the Expendable Gender: Played completely straight. While some short stories and concept art pieces feature female Atelian freedom fighters◊, both the resistance and Fahrong factions consist of only men in-game.
- Misidentified Weapons: Both the in-game UI and the manual is guilty of this, as they classify several weapons rather inconsistently.
- The single-shot Atelian musket is classified as a "light rifle" in the game's manual. Considering that it has a caliber which can effortlessly one-shot most enemies, "light" might be an understatement.
- The Vampire is referred to both as a submachine gun and a "light machine gun" as well - the latter of which being incorrect, as flavor material clearly describes it as a mass-produced SMG.
- The Chimera scattergun is classified as a "heavy rifle" in the game manual, even though it is clearly a shotgun.
- The Bretan assault rifle with its underbarrel grenade launcher is incorrectly referred to as a "machine gun".
- The Praetorian is categorized as a "heavy machine gun". Given the fact that it is man-portable, has deployable bipods and requires only a single soldier to operate, classifying it as a "light machine gun" would be more accurate.
- No One Sees the Boss: The mastermind of the resistance effort (and title character of the game), Warlord Sahrab, never actually appears during gameplay - he only provides some voicelines at the beginning and the end of each match either to boost morale (in a rather Drill Sergeant Nasty fashion) or scold players when losing the battle. Even if he appears in any of the intermission art at the end of a match, his presence is never specifically called out on them.
- Odd Name Out: As the game manual says, "small glass bottles with a flammable wick and loaded with alcohol make excellent makeshift bombs, and the Atelians are eager users of them". Which is certainly not surprising - what is surprising is that the game's user interface and manual both refer to this makeshift incendiary weapon as "Molotov", which sounds rather odd in the game's fictional universe. This is somewhat justified though, considering that:
- It is much easier to refer to the Molotov Cocktail by its real name in the user interface than with the fictional "Firesplats" also used in the manual.
- None of the bots and map descriptions refer to Molotov cocktails by their real-life name, so it's likely that in-universe, they are called "Firesplats".
- Onrushing Army: The tactics that every Confederate attack wave follows. Not even active traps, machine gun nests or anti-tank emplacements placed directly in front of them can stop Confederate conscripts from marching onwards on their predefined path and getting blown to pieces in the process...
- Poisoned Weapons: While the Atelian resistance can utilize poison traps with devastating results, Confederate engineers can build chemical rocket launch platforms, known as "Deathhand Missile Launchers". These automated platforms launch a chemical rocket every 90 seconds against our structures until they are destroyed by players, causing substantial impact damage on the structure and poison damage in its vicinity for several seconds. As Confederate engineers can quickly rebuild the platforms after destroying them, players should actively seek out and eliminate these specialists to prevent further rocket attacks (at least until the next attack wave, which also respawns the engineer).
- The Political Officer: Played with. The Confederate officer does not fail to motivate his underlings in a fashion that wouldn't be out of place in Warhammer 40,000 ("Fight like men, and die like men!" being his most restrained quip), and he has no qualms in sending hundreds (or even thousands) of his underlings into the meat grinder to crush the resistance. However, the officer never actually kills any of his own men to set any examples, and is more than willing to take on Atelian warriors personally with his gatling gun and sword if the opportunity arises. Onrushing Army tactics aside, his presence is strong enough gameplay-wise to force players to seek him out and kill him to deal a blow on Confederate morale.
- Praetorian Guard: Officers always travel around with an entourage of Elite Mooks known as "Herrad Legionnaires"◊. Needless to say, players should take care of the escort as well when taking on an officer.
- Propaganda Machine: Played straight with the various propaganda◊ posters◊ littered around the maps, and also played with via the Propaganda Radio. Introduced with the Scorched Earth DLC as a map spawn, the radio is a deployable item, causing nearby enemies to start frantically shooting at each other for a couple seconds when thrown on the ground. Given the enemies' general accuracy, they never wipe themselves out completely, but when thrown nearby a larger attack wave, the radio can still cause sizable losses among the Fahrong forces.
- Shields Are Useless: Averted with the enemy riot troops whose shields block the small-arms fire of players and bots. To take them out, players need to specifically aim at their foot visible below the shield, attempt shooting them from the sides or the back via circle-strafing (which rarely works), or use incendiary and explosive weaponry against them, like Molotovs, landmines, the alternate fire modes of the Chimera shotgun and the Bretan assault rifle, satchel charges, or the rocket launcher.
- Played straight with the machine gun nests and anti-tank emplacements though, both of which can mow down riot troops with ease.
- Skill Point Reset: Warlord does not have persistent unlockables and skills; instead, every weapon and passive skill is unlocked only for the duration of the current level. Launching another map from the menu resets progression.
- Silliness Switch: The game has a Holiday Mode option, replacing the usual in-game soldier and vehicle models with hilarious Christmas-themed doppelgangers. Minigun-toting Santa Claus officers FTW!
- Spider Tank: Known as "arachs", the Fahrong army occasionally deploys Steampunk walkers to support their attack waves. While the game only features a light recon◊ and a medium combat◊ variant, flavor material suggests that the Confederates also use a heavy unit◊ which is essentially a gigantic self-propelled artillery piece.
- The Squad: Your tiny group of guerilla fighters, of course, who must do the impossible and hold out long enough in key Atelian locations to force the overwhelming attacking forces to retreat and burn the battlefields to the ground. This makes you and your team Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder, albeit Warlord Sahrab sends you to these suicide missions as part of his desperation strategy, and not because he hates your guts.
- Tower Defense: Warlord occupies primarily this genre, even though the game zig-zags several key gameplay elements it.
- To start, unlike in other Tower Defense games, the constructable traps are single-use, and must be regularly rebuilt after they activated. This means that they are mostly relegated to early-game use, and are typically superseded by upgradable defense structures once players can collect enough Power to afford them.
- While machine gun nests and anti-tank emplacements work well together (especially when placed strategically at chokepoints), enemy combat vehicles pose a great danger to them, even if said structures are fully upgraded. The Scarab troop transport and the regular Ontos tank can easily destroy even the highest-level machine gun bunkers in a couple seconds, while the Hellfire-variant of the Ontos and the arachs can both destroy any defense building with a single attack. This means that unlike in most Tower Defense games, players can never fully leave their contraptions behind, and must always stick around and weaken enemy waves enough so that the defense structures can finish the job without risks.
- Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Played straight and averted at the same time.
- Flamethrowers, in general, are really powerful and can deal massive damage - the Fahrongi flamethrowers that is (which also take the Demonic Spiders trope to spectacular new levels, as flamer troops can easily kill inexperienced or underequipped players, especially when they gang up on them).
- The Atelian "Salamander" flamethrower available to players is nearly as powerful as the enemy variant and even has a unique secondary firing mode: it can spray some of its fuel on the ground to create flammable patches of burning fire. Sadly, it's severely disadvantaged by its small and fast-depleting fuel tank, making it Cool, but Inefficient. Your best bet is to crouch behind a corner of an alleyway and start squirting flame on a fresh new row of incoming enemy soldiers once they approach you. Because of this, the Molotov Cocktail is an overall better incendiary weapon suited for most situations.
- Flamethrowers, in general, are really powerful and can deal massive damage - the Fahrongi flamethrowers that is (which also take the
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: One common tactic to gain Power (especially if gold is spawned quite far away from the Stronghold) is to lure enemy rocketeers and flamethrower units near cowering civilians, take cover behind them, and then have the Confederate units kill them. Collateral Damage by Fahrong units rewards roughly the same amount of Power as taking out an enemy arach, so on higher difficulties, "farming" civilians with this method is practically required to gather enough Power to survive even the early-game phase.
- The War Sequence: As insane as it sounds, every single level from start to finish is this as soon as the first wave appears. Which, of course, also elevates the gameplay to Nintendo Hard levels for unexperienced players. In general, gameplay could be described as "Defend your turf in the most Awesome way possible!"
- Warrior Monk: To make main attack waves more of a threat to experienced players, the Winter Offensive update added Confederate Templars to the roster. They are armed with gatling guns and underbarrel grenade launchers.
- Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Considering the methods that the Atelian resistance uses to ensure victory, this trope might be more accurate if called "Freedom Fighters Are Terrorists" in case of Warlord. On a strategic level, Warlord Sahrab is desperate enough to willingly sacrifice Atelian cities and thousands of innocent civilians to spark an uprising against the invading Confederates. At the same time, on a tactical level, resistance cells sent to said cities are more than willing to use the locals as human shields to provoke the Confederates to cause Collateral Damage, and sometimes are even tasked to force the bombing of certain districts to make sure that the local populace witnessing resistance operations will not live to tell about them. All this make for a rather gut-wrenching example of The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized trope.
Iron Grip: Lords of War tropes
- Genre Shift: Unlike The Oppression and Warlord which were online-oriented RTS / FPS / Tower Defense action games, Lords of War was a free-to-play browser game focusing on faction management (such as gathering resources, training and upgrading troops) and raiding the camps of fellow players for troops, resources and a better leaderboard position.
- Great Offscreen War: Zig-zagged, considering the genre. While players could actually go into battle against other players, the game did not visualize said battles in any way - it only showed the results statistics of the battle, including the units lost during the skirmish, the number of captured enemy troops and resources, and so on.
- We ARE Struggling Together: The Aesop of the game, basically, showing that while Sahrab could actually unite Atelians for the duration of driving the Fahrong out of the country, Atelia quickly fell victim of the in-fighting among the bickering warlords afterwards. Although considering the methods Sahrab used to achieve said unity, seeing it dissolving as soon as the Confederates left is not surprising.
Iron Grip: Marauders tropes
- Genre Shift: Again, considering that unlike Lords of War (which was an online browser game), Marauders was an online Turn-Based Strategy game featuring actual 3D battles.
- Sky Pirate: The game was focusing on the airborne pirates of Iron Grip, allowing players to create their own marauder captain and their own sky pirate faction. The concept was also revisited in some short stories as well.
