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Our Iron Harvest review referred to the real-time strategy game as “Company Of Heroes with mechs”, which is a strong pitch. A future update is planning on borrowing yet more ideas from mid-00s strategy games, with the addition of a campaign world map.
Developers KING Art teased the update in a recent Steam post, as spotted by cheeky RPS fanzine PC Gamer. Apparently “a new World Map Campaign mode for single player vs. A.I.” will arrive in the next month or so.
The World Map campaign gives you various scenarios to choose from, each set on a map split into distinct territories, some unclaimed and some already controlled by enemy AI. You then choose how to advance across the map. “Entering each province will expose you to new battles and skirmish set-ups. They’ll be a lot of replayability in this game mode,” says the developer post.
It sounds to me like the campaign map in another classic Relic Software RTS, the Dawn Of War standalone expansion Dark Crusade. I’m a big fan of modes like this because I mostly play strategy games for their skirmishes, not their stories, and hanging those skirmishes in a larger context can be extremely compelling.
If you haven’t played it, Iron Harvest is set during WW1, but a WW1 where trench warfare is supplemented by steam-powered mechs. Steve Hogarty liked it overall when reviewing it for us in 2020. “Iron Harvest is a throwback to one of the last golden ages of the genre, often feeling as old fashioned and crusty as that association entails, but frequently reminding us of the essential appeal of extremely large robots chilling out in timelines where they shouldn’t be,” he wrote.
The next update will also include new “fixes and improvements.” You can see a couple more screenshots of the campaign mode, including an option menu for setting up your own campaigns, over on the Steam post.