I’m just a tiny mining droid trying to carve an upward path through the brutalist monolith that dominates the skyline. Not hurting anyone, am I? Yet, I’d be making much better progress if it weren’t for the pesky red-eyed monsters that keep attacking my base. They’re just afraid of change – NIMBYs the lot of them.
Every few floors I climb, I have to race home to blast the incoming creeps with my base’s gun turret. But then that’s the ever-present challenge of Iter-8, the latest half-mining game, half tower defence game to have stolen my attention.
This isn’t the first time I’ve played a game that pairs the digging of Manic Miner with the Missile Command style base defence. Iter-8’s structure is extremely similar to Dome Keeper and Wall World – two games I’m also a sucker for. (Less so Wall World 2.) As in those games, there is a clear divide to the action: in the mines you’re drilling for resources, dragging ore and scavenged equipment back to your base; back at base, your focus is purely on shredding the incoming waves.
Again, similar to Dome Keeper and Wall World, you spend resources extracted from the mine on upgrades, either to your mining equipment or base weaponry. That could be a more powerful mining laser or a larger carry bag for ore, or maybe a faster-firing turret. Fail to mine enough resources between the waves of enemies and you can’t afford to keep pace with the enemies’ growing strength.
Iter-8 isn’t identical to those other games. It differs in two important ways. In Dome Keeper, you mine down. In Wall World, you mine to the right. And in Iter-8 you mine upwards. Okay, that’s not the biggest difference, but it’s good to know we are just one game away from being able to mine in all four directions. Iter-8 also introduces a tower defence layer and a little light puzzle solving.
Attribution
As you climb the monolith, you will uncover gold-coloured wires connecting sprawling nodes. Dig out every node in the chain and you will unlock a relic that you can convert into a tower back at your base. In the demo I’ve played, I’ve only come across a cannon and howitzer so far, but I suspect (and hope) there are more varied towers to come. While towers don’t radically change the dynamic at play, they do make incoming waves a little more forgiving, especially as your mining operation takes you further and further from your home base.
The puzzles are a little more of a departure. On each floor of the monolith, you’ll find a door out to a platform dotted with mirrors, stacked blocks of concrete, and a glass shard. Your job is simple, uses the mirrors to reflect a shaft of light into the glass shard. You’ll need to reotate the mirrors and clear away any blocks that block the light beam. Your reward is a nice little upgrade for your home base.
These additions don’t radically change what is on offer in Dome Keeper and Wall World. However, it’s different enough to excite my little brain and convince it is playing something new enough to while away an hour or two – long after I’ve got through what’s available in the demo. I’m also a big fan of games that use a tilt-shift effect, giving every object and enemy in the game the appearance of being a figurine.
