Colony Ship Review — Hardcore Tactical RPG for Old School

Colony Ship was released in November 2023, and the version I'm reviewing here is 1.0.6 from Steam.

As always, I'll try to stay objective... BIG fan of Iron Tower Studio games since Age of Decadence!

A bit of lore for the nerds among us 🤓 — the game is set in the year 2754, aboard a ship called the Starfarer, a retrofitted interplanetary freighter that had already been 20 years in service when it was rechristened. Destination: Proxima Centauri. The whole thing was funded by religious zealots convinced their descendants would found a new promised land. And the biggest nod of all: Colony Ship is directly inspired by Robert A. Heinlein's "Orphans of the Sky" — the 1941 novel that basically invented the generation ship trope.

Iron Tower Studio: A Difficulty Straight Out of the 80s

If you're not familiar with Iron Tower Studio, they developed 2 games before Colony Ship.

First came The Age of Decadence, a hardcore tactical RPG critically acclaimed on Steam and, like Colony Ship, a game with several ways to complete it. Then came Dungeon Rats, a dungeon crawler — kind of a roguelike — set in the same "Roman" universe. Both games were made in an "old school" style, with a difficulty straight out of the 80s!

You know you want to take the harder way! 😈

In these games you're not supposed to be a superhero, so you're not supposed to win every fight by simply rushing in — unlike other role-playing games where you become so powerful you can literally destroy everything in your path. And between you and me, those games get boring after a while, because there's no challenge left...

So in Iron Tower Studio games there are sometimes battles that are either optional and/or look impossible... But there's always a way in the end to make it easier, talk your way out, or turn it to your advantage.

Is Colony Ship a Tactical Puzzle RPG?

"Tactical puzzle RPG" is a term used to describe games where, if you want to make the best out of a mission or a fight — meaning accomplish all the secondary objectives and gain more experience from it — you have to position your team in a certain way and move to specific spots throughout the entire mission.

A perfect example of a tactical puzzle RPG would be Druidstone! A game developed by the makers of the famous dungeon crawlers Legend of Grimrock 1 and Grimrock 2, honoring the memory of the 80s classic Dungeon Master.

And when it comes to Iron Tower Studio games, the "puzzle" running through their entire design is trying to squeeze the most experience out of every situation, in order to raise as many of your skills as possible. For example: a situation where you could talk your way out if you had a Streetwise skill of 3... but unfortunately you only have 2, and you're nowhere near leveling up. So you'd just pass the situation without gaining any extra experience...

A situation where I didn't have enough to talk my way out... but enough to kill one guy right away 😜

Or! You avoid this situation for now, go and find other situations elsewhere in the game requiring a Streetwise level of 2 (which you have), thus raising that skill and gaining enough experience to reach level 3 — and then come back later to the first situation, which will now grant you even more experience!

And in their games this really matters, because everything is hand-made: there are no random situations, so there's a maximum amount of experience you can gain, depending on which path you take to complete the game. Maximizing the experience earned from every situation will open more doors for you down the line.

There are conversations where you need several skill checks in order to reach a Disposition of 10 and win!

Word of advice: sometimes during a conversation, you get the option to "Attack Now" and gain an Initiative bonus. Don't do it... Because after a few times, you'll earn a perk that lowers your initial disposition. Disposition is influenced by Charisma, and it's fundamental if you want to talk your way out of situations you'd rather not fight! So if you pick up this perk while also having low Charisma, you're going to screw yourself for the rest of the game.

I personally earned this perk without even realizing it by the end of the game, and it screwed me over in 2-3 situations where I had the skills to reach a Disposition of 10 — but with that -1 disposition penalty, I just couldn't get there anymore...

The Odds Are NOT in Your Favor

Most of the time, and even more so during the first hours... you'll definitely feel like the game is against you!

Theoretically, your opponents should have exactly the same chances of killing you... but in reality, the dice rolls will favor your opponents more than once. I'm not even joking — I've seen it! As if the battles weren't hard enough, lol! You see, there's a random element in every fight, which can sometimes turn a whole battle into a disaster for you... or for your foes! But in practice it'll favor the game more than you, so you'll really have to be smarter to survive!

Most battles are designed to make you outthink the AI! Otherwise you'll die fast... 😨

In most fights you'll be outnumbered — it'll be rare to be 3 against 3 or 4 against 4. Especially if your Charisma attribute is low, which limits you to a maximum of 2 companions. Trust me, it's an important factor: I completed the game with only 3 people (2 companions + me), whereas if I had put 1-2 more points into Charisma, I'd have been able to bring a 4th guy along. And even though skill gains are shared, it's always better to be 4 than 3...

Forget the Hoarder Playstyle

Remember those RPGs where you had so much stuff in your inventory that you never used any of it? 😏

That's over in Colony Ship! Many battles are so tough that you'll have to use whatever you've got in your backpack to stay alive! Stims to heal you, stims to turn you into a temporary super soldier, grenades to poison your enemies, blind them, or create a smoke barrier to stop the sharpshooters in cover from killing you!

There are even "expensive" grenades to disable gadgets like energy shields, or to create a "stasis field" that prevents someone from acting for several turns — or that protects one of your badly wounded teammates, since a stasis field prevents any harm to the affected characters for a few turns. Again, you have to turn the tide in your favor.

And in just a few turns, anything can happen in Colony Ship!

There are battles where I remember having to burn through most of my stims and grenades to prevail. At least that way your credits actually serve a purpose, since you'll have to seek out traders to refill your stock. And don't think they come cheap... Anything that helps you significantly in battle will be expensive! So you'll have to manage your finances.

Just 2 examples where I was outnumbered and had to use my entire inventory to prevail 😎

Sneaking Will Save Your Life

Sneaking will save your life more than once in Colony Ship!

And for people who have played Iron Tower's previous games, it's definitely an area they improved in Colony Ship — unlike Age of Decadence, where there weren't that many places where "sneaking" could be used.

Actually, Stealth and Science skills are all very important... You'll find many places throughout the game where you'll have to sneak in and take out a few guards to make a fight easier later on. Or other places where sneaking lets you access a protected computer, where — for example — you'll be able to reprogram turrets to kill everyone in a room.

But for all of that you'll need a mix of Stealth and Science skills! Sneaking so you're not detected, "Electronics" to bypass locked doors, "Lockpicking" to open cabinets, and of course "Computers" to reprogram consoles.

Taking out a guard on the left (one less to fight!) and sneaking into a building on the right 😎

And I don't need to tell you that the best gear in Colony Ship is found in locked containers, sometimes behind force fields — and if you don't raise these skills, you'll miss out on a lot of high-end equipment. In Colony Ship, like in all their previous games, gear plays a part just as big as your skills. Don't underestimate the power of good armor when it comes to staying alive.

Colony Ship for the Win!

Colony Ship is exactly what we "fans of old school RPGs" were waiting for!

This game had been in early access from the very beginning, because the developers wanted to work alongside the community to make sure their game would be a success. And even though I'm not the kind of guy who plays early access games — I only play a product once it's finished and polished — I know it's the best way to generate more sales.

Honestly, I really want Iron Tower Studio to sell a lot of copies of Colony Ship! Because I fucking want to play the sequel, that's why! I want Iron Tower Studio to grow bigger, to be able to hire more developers and designers, so they can bring us an even bigger sequel! Unfortunately this specific sequel won't happen... you'll read later...

Guess I'm some kind of masochist, because I know this game stressed me out A LOT! And still... I want more! 😅

My build by the end of the game — I really didn't focus on combat skills... That's why the fights were hard!

If you like a good challenge, managing your resources to avoid going broke, and making sure you use everything you have just to stay alive, then this game is made for you.

For old fans only: like in every other Iron Tower Studio game, there are a few completely optional fights designed to test your skills and wits. These are similar to the fight against "The Guardian" in Age of Decadence, or "The Constructs" and the "5 Roman waves" in Dungeon Rats. They're the kind of battles that look impossible at first sight... but there's a LOT of pride to be gained if you manage to overcome them!

Iron Tower Studio info (2026 update):

Remember what I wrote just above — that I wanted Iron Tower to sell a lot of copies, because I wanted a sequel? Well... I got my answer. And it's not the one I was hoping for.

In early 2025, Vince D. Weller laid out the studio's future plans: Colony Ship sold well "for an obscure indie RPG", but not well enough to pay for the sequel. The plan had never been to tell another story on the same ship — it was to continue the story on Proxima, 40 years after planetfall. A whole new world, with everything that entails... which would have required a bigger team and a much bigger budget. They simply don't have the resources. Not now, anyway.

So instead, their 4th game is a smaller, combat-focused project: Heralds of the Third Apocalypse, a Lovecraftian bronze age tactical RPG — hex-grid combat, a party of 6, spellcasting, and runes carved into your comrades' flesh (think Colony Ship's implants). In Vince's own words: "it's either that or shutting down for good". And when asked whether they'd actually make it: "I'd say 50/50, if we're being honest."

So here's my ask, and it costs you nothing. The devs said the single best way to support them is to leave a review on Steam — "no matter how brief". Reviews boost visibility, visibility drives sales, and the revenue from all 3 games IS the 4th game's budget. If you enjoyed Colony Ship, go write two lines. That's the whole ask.

I've written too many of these updates lately. Piranha Bytes is gone. Spiders is gone. Iron Tower is still here — and unlike the other two, this one is still in our hands 😉 it's up to us not to use cracked versions of these games, because unlike many people are saying, because it serves them well, Piracy is not helping sales! Only in specific scenarios does it help. Otherwise for independant studios it can literally kill them. (Happened in the past for the game Paper Sorcerer).

+ Very... VERY addictive! Once you start, it's hard to stop...
+ Challenging from the very beginning to the very end...
+ Replayable if you're the type to test other paths / builds
+ The harder it is, the more you'll be rewarded

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- A very stressful game... You will curse it many times!
- Save often, this game is unforgiving in many ways.
(so if you get stuck, you can fall back on an old savegame)