The dauntless infantry and towering mechs of Iron Harvest will be trooping out to battle a little bit earlier than originally anticipated. Developer King Art Games will be opening its killing fields to all comers for a public beta to whet appetites and collect some final feedback before launch.
Iron Harvest features an evocative, post-Great War aesthetic that blends alternate-history mechs with agricultural Europe circa the 1920s. Early impressions of the title have been favorable, and if Iron Harvest delivers on the promise of its associated properties, it could provide a breath of fresh air to a genre that has suffered a long drought. Though it could see competition from the recently announced strategy title, Manor Lords, by developer Slavic Magic.
The Iron Harvest public beta is scheduled to kick off on July 30th and run until the official launch on September 1st. In their developer blog, King Art Games has announced that players will be able to control all three of the game's diesel-fueled factions, including the newly revealed Rusviets, during this period, which they refer to as a "pre-season." That specific turn of phrase seems to suggest that King Art Games may have esports aspirations for the title. Fans of StarCraft 2 looking for new games should keep an eye out.
This isn't the first opportunity for players to get an early hands-on with stompy, industrial-punk mechs. King Art Games held a free demo weekend for Iron Harvest on Steam from June 16-20. Frequent free-periods suggest the developer is not only confident, but eager to take community feedback into account, and it will be interesting to see how the RTS evolves before its full-release.
Iron Harvest launches on PC this September, but the free open beta begins on July 30th.