Twin Stick shooters are pretty common these days, but not many can claim to use a setup that truly makes you feel like you are accomplishing something with every failure. Such is the case with Iron Fisticle.

Iron Fisticle is a twin stick shooter for PC that has an old school arcade feel. In fact, it’s pretty much like Smash TV with how it operates. There are a series of rooms that you need to traverse to get to the boss. The rooms fill with large waves of enemies that progressively get more aggressive with every floor and room. To aid the player against these large odds, you can level up your character, which does a variety of things like increase stats or unlock new sub-weapons. So even though you might have died in that one problem room or boss for the umpteenth time, you will always be making progress. This encourages replays until you succeed. Aside from the sub-weapons which are gained from random chests, you can use a dash attack maneuver to mow down a thin string of monsters or evade bullets. You can also use an Iron Fisticle attack that kills minor enemies or does minor damage to bosses in a radius around the character. Sometimes between each room you can play a forced scrolling platform segments to get coins. The coins are then used at shops to either temporarily or permanently boost your health or stats. Stats include attack power, walking speed, weapon throwing speed, and sub-weapon duration. The sub-weapons range from fast throwing darts to hammers that ricochet off of walls. In addition to monsters there are traps like moving blades or explosive barrels.

While this is a fun game with a decent degree of challenge, there are some issues that hold it back. First would be the window screen sizes. There is no 3x option, it caps at 2x before going to two modes of full-screen. Also there is a scan line mode to make it feel more retro, but the scan lines seem to thick, making a dark overcast on the screen and making it harder to see the sprites. This is made more difficult when the sprite sizes themselves are often too small. Another thing to note about the game is that unlike its inspiration Smash TV, the game doesn’t have nearly as much personality. Smash TV had corny voice overs from an insane gameshow host and killer music, but this game doesn’t offer that so much. It is however still a fun little game. There is co-op for two players, so it will always be more enjoyable with a friend. The price point is not too shabby at 8 bucks as well. Give it a shot if you think it’s worth it.

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