Iron Wings is a WWII arcade flight sim, developed by Naps Team. The cool part about this game concept is that it also has ground 3rd person shooter elements.

You’ll probably know Naps team most from their most recent title, Maria The Witch, which was released earlier this year.

As for Iron Wings, it appears that part of the game is based on real life, but other parts are mixed with fiction to tell a unique story. For me, I don’t mind if the game is 100% historically accurate because games should be fun and original first and foremost. Crimson Skies and Blazing Angels were two really fun arcade flight sims back in the 2003-2006 era, and it looks like Iron Wings will have similar gameplay and story elements. The graphics are nice, there are a large variety of planes, and the plot is intriguing enough that I do want to see more.

As for the story, you will play as both Jack and Amelia, two pilots fighting during operation Husky which was part of the WWII invasion of Sicily, and follows our two heroes as they fight to defeat the German army.

During the game there will be parts where you will have to complete certain missions on foot, turning the game from an arcade flight simulator to a third person shooter where you will have take cover and shoot ground forces to survive.

The developers released quite a few trailers for Iron Wings, so take a look at the first Kickstarter trailer that I linked below.

https://youtu.be/QZq2_u1ZWf8

There were a few comments that were concerned about the historical accuracy of the game, but since this game is mixed with fiction and the creators can tell whatever type of story they want, my main concern was more about gameplay and the overall mechanics of how the airplanes and 3rd person shooter elements would function. As you watch the below “gameplay” teaser trailers you will see where my concerns arise.

Based on the above two videos, you will see that there are parts that cuts away from the actual gameplay. I can’t tell if they mixed the gameplay with cutscenes or if the game has a critical hit kill-cam function to add a more cinematic experience, where if you get a kill or blow something up you get a small cutscene that takes you away from the gameplay. I noticed that whenever the player does a high evasive maneuver, such as a barrel roll, the camera almost always cuts away to a more dynamic camera angle which makes it very difficult to tell what is gameplay from what is a staged cinematic scene.

Another point is the constant vignette and screen filter that makes the game look like it has an old grainy look. When you combine all these elements it makes it quite difficult to tell how much gameplay we are really looking at. However, these exact concerns were addressed by the developers in the Steam Greenlight comment section as they explained that what we are looking at is in fact actual gameplay, and the game will play out exactly like what was shown depending on the player’s settings and preferences.

Thanks so much for your appreciations!

As for historical accuracy of course it’s still an action adventure game not a pure historical simulation, history have been respected but between the limits of serving as solid context to the story.

Actually videos show only real-time cutscenes and realtime gameplay, what you see is what you actually play.

Also the experience is totally customizable, you can enable/disable hud for a more realistic feel or decide how much the gameplay must be simulative or arcade or how much you want to get action as in a movie or as a pure arcade or disable blood or soldiers if that’s too gory.

We actually are a lot forward in development but still need much improvements here and there together with top quality voice acting details, more planes, more worlds, more missions, localization and porting to console and all this requires a lot of professional resources.

Btw please share, we really need all of your support <3

I have to say that the concept and the idea of mixing flight sims, third person shooter elements, cinematic gameplay and story-driven missions has me interested, especially since this game was posted on Steam Greenlight as an indie title.

I can see the potential, but it is still far too early to tell since the developers still have a year left of development to go before it’ll officially be released.

If you would like to support the developers to help get this game funded, you can head on over to their kickstarter campaign page to help them out. Additionally, you can also check out their official website to learn more about the company and the Iron Wings game.