Amberlight Games’ base-building RTS game Iron Expedition lets you take the reins of a gun-toting mech at the front of your own army.
It’s the usual RTS goodness on the surface. Build your bases, fortify your bases, send out your units to capture new zones, and secure vital resources.
But you get to be a bit more hands-on in the skirmishes as you’ll be piloting a hulking mech with enough firepower to raze enemy forces to the ground. You still have troops to command, but they’ll provide backup.
Iron Expedition: War is (Bullet) Hell
The mech shooting side of Iron Expedition utilises the top-down perspective favoured by many RTS titles, and gives it a twin-stick shooter bullet hell flavour
As a result, the RTS side is of a more intense pace, with something of a light show on display as your mech trades blows with enemy forces.
While the majority of your time will see you out and about gathering resources and blasting enemies, the threat will occasionally come to your front door. So you’ll need to fortify your defences and dig in for a tower defence-style siege.
It’s a bit more intense than the developer’s last outing, the family-friendly co-op game Bark and Catch, in which players team up as dogs to help lazy farmers. It does share some base-building DNA, though, so maybe we can have a little dog mech somewhere in Iron Expedition that grows crops.
Iron Expedition will be released on Steam, but there is currently no set release window. You can wishlist it in the meantime.
Check out more upcoming RTS titles in our growing list of 2026 releases in the genre.
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