ISOTX

Last updated
ISOTX
Type Private
Industry Video games
Founded2005 (2005)
FounderVincent van Geel (co-founder) Byron Rupp (co-founder)
ProductsMidEast Crisis

Iron Grip: The Oppression
Iron Grip: Warlord
Iron Grip: Lords of War
MidEast Crisis 2

Contents

Iron Grip: Marauders
Website ISOTX.com

ISOTX was a Dutch independent video game developer founded by Vincent van Geel and Byron Rupp in 2005. In 2014 Vincent van Geel left the company. The company continued on, yet dissolved December 2015.

Their first release was the MidEast Crisis mod for C&C Generals. This was followed by Iron Grip: The Oppression, a mod for Half-Life 2. Since Iron Grip: The Oppression, nearly all ISOTX games have been set in the Iron Grip Universe; a dieselpunk alternative reality setting.

In 2008 ISOTX released their first commercial game, Iron Grip: Warlord, which received somewhat mixed reviews. IGN only gave the game 4.5/10, but other smaller websites gave more positive reviews. [1] [2] [3] [4] The gameplay in Iron Grip: Warlord offered a mix of first-person shooter and tower defense gameplay. While defending against waves of attacking enemies, players had to hunt down enemy officers to reduce enemy morale and win the battle. In 2012, ISOTX released the Scorched Earth DLC for Iron Grip: Warlord on Steam, which added new weapons, enemies, and a deathmatch game mode [5]

The next game released by ISOTX was the free-to-play strategy MMO Iron Grip: Lords of Atelia, which would later be renamed to Iron Grip: Lords of War. [6] [7]

In 2011, ISOTX launched the open beta of their second free-to-play strategy MMO, Iron Grip: Marauders, which featured 3D turn-based battles using the Unity game engine. The game was released through Steam, an online distributor, as part of their Free to Play catalog on September 30, 2011. [8] [9] Iron Grip: Marauders became available on Amazon.com through their Games Connect feature in 2012. [10] Marauders has received a number of significant updates, often changing gameplay or other major features. It received a notable visual upgrade on March 18, 2011. [11] To highlight the 3D capabilities of the game, the developers changed the view from an isometric camera to a perspective camera [11] and added a zoom function to allow players to look more closely at units and structures. [12] The developers also upgraded the internal Unity engine from 2.7 to 3.0, with plans to make use of the new engine's capabilities to add lighting effects and more detailed terrain maps in later patches. [12] The "Boss Smash Patch" released in May 2011 included a day and night cycle, more units, avatar customization, and bosses which randomly attack players. [13] Other changes include a base building system where players could place structures and units to produce income and defend the base (this was later removed), the introduction of a smuggling system, and more recently an assault system where players could pick units to go on an automated 10‑minute battle. In April 2012, ISOTX partnered with QINQO, meaning that people in Belgium and the Netherlands could buy in-game currency from shops in the form of prepaid QINQO cards.

In March 2013 ISOTX revealed their new project, a free online multiplayer game, March of War. It's going to be a F2P strategic, turn-based episodic multiplayer world war online game for PC, Mac and iOS/Android. [14] March of War takes places in an alternate dieselpunk influenced 1940 world, where democratically elected players lead six warring factions through the turn-based episodic struggle for world domination. It's the world's first episodic free-to-play game based on the TV series model. The game promises over 80 units and 60 maps with four gameplay modes. Every month a new episode is released bringing a number of new features to the game.

Games

Iron Grip: Lords of War

Iron Grip: Lords of War
IGL Image.png
The interface of Iron Grip: Lords of War


Iron Grip: Lords of War (previously Lords of Atelia [6] [7] ) was a free-to-play online browser game. The game was closed down in early 2014. [15]

In Lords of War, game players gather resources (primarily power, coal, and iron) and use them to upgrade the player's camp, hire workers, build defensive and offensive weapons, and to attack other players. [16] Players can also collect gold to exchange for other resources, and gems that can be purchased and exchanged for special benefits through the smugglers at a camp’s airport. Coal and iron can be mined or taken from other players by fighting them. Power generates slowly based on a player's level. Gold is gained by completing some daily decision quests, by sending out gold seekers, by spending gems, or by winning battles on certain servers in the game Iron Grip: Warlord.

As players level up through combat, missions, or upgrading their camp, they gain the ability to build more advanced tools and weapons. To make use of these items, players must choose how to assign their men between defense, offense and mining iron or coal. Leveling up also provides boosts, which can be assigned to areas such as mining efficiency, recruitment cost discounts, power generation and other areas for a permanent improvement.

A new patch which is currently in beta changes the combat by adding hex based maps where players move units in a turn based battle, rather than before where they would send their units into battle, and immediately be told what happened. The length of each turn depends on the type of battle.

There is also an alliance system which allows players to jointly contribute to alliance vaults, walls, and demolishers. Walls provide defensive bonuses to players in the alliance, while demolishers provide bonuses to alliance members when attacking enemy alliances.

Related Research Articles

<i>Total War</i> (video game series) Computer strategy game series

Total War is a series of strategy games developed by British developer Creative Assembly for personal computers. They combine turn-based strategy and resource management with real-time tactical control of battles. Rather uniquely for real-time strategy games, flanking manoeuvers and formations factor heavily into gameplay. The first of the series, Shogun: Total War, was released in June 2000. The most recent major game released was Total War: Warhammer III on February 17, 2022. As of October 2022, the series has sold over 40.4 million copies.

<i>Master of Magic</i> 1994 video game

Master of Magic is a single-player, fantasy turn-based 4X strategy game in which the player plays as a wizard attempting to dominate two linked worlds. From a small settlement, the player manages resources, builds cities and armies, and researches spells, growing an empire and fighting the other wizards.

Warlords is a video game series created by Steve Fawkner, in which role-playing elements are combined with turn-based strategy in a fantasy setting. The series began with Warlords in 1990 and includes three other games, two expansion packs, and several spinoffs.

Tactical role-playing games, also known as strategy role-playing games and in Japan as simulation RPGs, are a video game genre that combines core elements of role-playing video games with those of tactical strategy video games. The formats of tactical RPGs are much like traditional tabletop role-playing games and strategy games in appearance, pacing, and rule structure. Likewise, early tabletop role-playing games are descended from skirmish wargames such as Chainmail, which were primarily concerned with combat.

<i>Hearts of Iron II</i> 2005 video game

Hearts of Iron II is a grand strategy computer war game for the PC based upon its predecessor, Hearts of Iron, which was developed by Paradox Development Studio and published by Paradox Interactive.

<i>Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria</i> 2003 video game

Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria is a turn-based strategy video game developed by Infinite Interactive and published by Ubi Soft. It is the fourth in the Warlords series.

<i>Warhammer: Mark of Chaos</i> 2006 video game

Warhammer: Mark of Chaos is a real-time tactics game set in the Warhammer universe. It was developed by Black Hole Entertainment and co-published by Namco Bandai Games in the US and Deep Silver in PAL territories. The game was released for Microsoft Windows in the US on November 14, 2006, with subsequent release in PAL territories on November 23, 2006.

<i>Civilization IV: Warlords</i> 2006 video game

Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Warlords is the first official expansion pack of the critically acclaimed turn-based strategy video game Civilization IV.

Tower defense (TD) is a subgenre of strategy games where the goal is to defend a player's territories or possessions by obstructing the enemy attackers or by stopping enemies from reaching the exits, usually achieved by placing defensive structures on or along their path of attack. This typically means building a variety of different structures that serve to automatically block, impede, attack or destroy enemies. Tower defense is seen as a subgenre of real-time strategy video games, due to its real-time origins, even though many modern tower defense games include aspects of turn-based strategy. Strategic choice and positioning of defensive elements is an essential strategy of the genre.

<i>Iron Grip: Warlord</i> 2008 video game

Iron Grip: Warlord is the first commercial release from independent video game developer ISOTX. It is a first-person shooter combined with many real-time strategy elements. It uses the id Tech 3 game engine and is set in the fictional universe of Iron Grip.

<i>Afterfall: Insanity</i> 2011 video game

Afterfall: Insanity is a post-apocalyptic video game developed by Intoxicate Studios and published by Nicolas Entertainment Group. It was released for Microsoft Windows on 25 November 2011.

Stronghold 3 is a 2011 real-time strategy video game for Microsoft Windows developed by Firefly Studios and published by 7Sixty. The game is the seventh in the series after several spin-offs, including a remake, Stronghold: Crusader Extreme, and Stronghold Kingdoms. It is the sequel to Stronghold, released in 2001, and Stronghold 2 released in 2005. Unlike previous games in the series which were published by Take-Two Interactive, the game has been published by SouthPeak Games, the new parent company of Gamecock Media Group, publisher of Stronghold Crusader Extreme.

<i>Total War: Shogun 2</i> 2011 video game

Total War: Shogun 2 is a strategy video game developed by Creative Assembly and published by Sega in 2011. It is part of the Total War series and returns to the 16th-century Japan setting of the first Total War game, Shogun: Total War, after a series of games set mainly in Europe and the Middle East.

<i>Supreme Commander</i> (video game) 2007 video game

Supreme Commander is a 2007 real-time strategy video game designed by Chris Taylor and developed by his company, Gas Powered Games. The game is considered to be a spiritual successor, not a direct sequel, to Taylor's 1997 game Total Annihilation, and also the Spring remake. First announced in the August 2005 edition of PC Gamer magazine, the game was released in Europe on February 16, 2007, and in North America on February 20.

<i>Iron Brigade</i> (video game) 2011 video game

Iron Brigade, formerly titled Trenched, is a 2011 video game, developed by Double Fine Productions, published by Microsoft Studios as a downloadable Xbox Live Arcade title on the Xbox 360, and set for release as a Microsoft Windows title in 2012. Announced at the 2011 Game Developers Conference by Tim Schafer, Iron Brigade is a hybrid tower defense and third-person shooter game, set after World War I in an alternate reality, where the player controls units from the Mobile Trench Brigade to fight off robotic species called the Monovision. The player controls giant mecha-style robots with weapon and armor customization through a variety of missions set across the world. The game was released on the Xbox Live service on June 22, 2011, with a delayed release in certain European areas due to trademark issues with the title, with its release scheduled for November 30, 2011 but was ultimately released on December 1, 2011 under the alternate name Iron Brigade. The name of the title was updated worldwide to Iron Brigade alongside the European release.

<i>Iron Grip: Marauders</i> 2011 video game

Iron Grip: Marauders was a free-to-play online war game with 3D turn-based battles. Following an open beta the game was released through Steam, the online distributor, on September 30, 2011.

Total War: Arena was a strategy game under development by Creative Assembly and published by Wargaming Alliance. It was the first free-to-play title in the Total War series. Total War: Arena focused on online multiplayer, mixing elements of real-time strategy and multiplayer online battle arena gameplay. The game featured 10-vs-10 battles with each player controlling 3 units, each containing up to 100 warriors.

Hammerwatch is a 2013 hack and slash and action-adventure game developed and published by Swedish studio Crackshell. It was released for Linux, Microsoft Windows and OS X in August 2013, followed by released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in December 2017. It also has the sequel Heroes of Hammerwatch.

<i>Warhammer 40,000: Storm of Vengeance</i> 2014 video game

Warhammer 40,000: Storm of Vengeance is a real-time strategy video game developed and published by Eutechnyx. It was released for Microsoft Windows, Android and iOS. Warhammer 40,000: Storm of Vengeance was set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, it follows the Dark Angels, commanded by Grand Master Belial, and the Bad Moons, commanded by Ork Warlord Ghazghkull Thraka on the planet Piscina IV. Warhammer 40,000: Storm of Vengeance was released on 3 April 2014 (Steam), 23 April 2014 and 1 May 2014 (iOS).

<i>Taur</i> (video game) 2020 video game

Taur is an action-strategy sci-fi game developed and published by Swedish studio Echo Entertainment, released on 20 February 2020. The game is inspired by the tower defense genre and mixes strategy with wave survival.

References

  1. ↑ IGN review -
  2. ↑ Iron Grip: Warlord Review -- http://www.gamesabyss.com/index.php/reviews/12-pc/441-iron-grip-warlord
  3. ↑ Iron Grip: Warlord Review (PC) - "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-07-19. Retrieved 2012-11-12.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. ↑ Destructoid review - Iron Grip: Warlord - http://www.destructoid.com/destructoid-review-iron-grip-warlord-121685.phtml
  5. ↑ Steam product release - http://store.steampowered.com/news/7885/
  6. 1 2 "Iron Grip: Lords of Atelia Now Evolves to Iron Grip: Lords of War". BBGSite.com. 2010-11-07. Retrieved 2011-11-07.
  7. 1 2 "Iron Grip: Lords of War Re-Opens Its Gate to More Beta Testers". BBGSite.com. 2010-11-04. Retrieved 2011-11-08.
  8. ↑ Lewis, Sheila (2011-09-30). "Iron Grip Marauders - Latest Steam F2P Game". VE3D . IGN Entertainment. Archived from the original on October 2, 2011. Retrieved 2011-10-10.
  9. ↑ Valve (2011-09-30). "New Free to Play on Steam - Iron Grip: Marauders" . Retrieved 2 October 2011.
  10. ↑ "Play Iron Grip: Marauders Through Amazon". Browser Games.ca. 2012-07-14. Archived from the original on 2013-09-04. Retrieved 2012-07-30.
  11. 1 2 Ford, Suzie (2011-03-18). "Iron Grip: Marauders Updated". RTSGuru.com. Archived from the original on 2015-09-24. Retrieved 2011-10-10.
  12. 1 2 ISOTX (2011-03-18). "Iron Grip: Marauders visual overhaul". MCVUK.com. Retrieved 2011-10-08.
  13. ↑ White, Barry (2011-05-05). "ISOTX's Iron Grip: Marauders receives patch". News10.net. Archived from the original on 2013-02-22. Retrieved 2011-10-08.
  14. ↑ Meijer, Frank (2013-03-20). "March of War - Vechten voor volk en factie". Gamer.nl. Retrieved 2013-03-20.
  15. ↑ "ISOTX website" . Retrieved 2015-08-29.
  16. ↑ "Game Profile Lords of Atelia". onrpg.com. Retrieved 2011-11-08.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.