Tails of Iron is a Souls-like RPG developed by Odd Bug Studio and published by United Label. The game was released for Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC on September 17, 2021.
For centuries, rats from the Rat Kingdom and frogs from the Frog Lands have been at constant war with each other. After King Rattus finally came to rule, he managed to drive the frogs back to their swamp, and the Rat Kingdom experienced a long period of peace. But as King Rattus grew old and weary, he knew another invasion from the frogs was inevitable. Seeing no other option, King Rattus chooses his son, Prince Redgi, to succeed him after he dies. During Prince Redgi's coronation, the frogs attack the Rat Kingdom and storm the Crimson Keep. With all of his allies and family either dead or captured, Redgi takes up his sword and strikes back at the frogs before they destroy the whole kingdom.
A sequel, Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter, was announced in March 2024 with a Winter 2024 release date. Trailer here
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Tails of Iron provides examples of:
- Alien Blood: Frogs have green blood, while grubs and mozis have yellow blood.
- Always Chaotic Evil: Even noncombatant frogs are bloodthirsty savages trying to destroy the Rat Kingdom by any means necessary. One frog village displays a line of slaughtered rat civilians hung up like cuts of meat, right next to a pot that's clearly been used to cook at least one of them.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: The Rat Kingdom is actively preparing for war, so sovereignty goes to whichever prince is the best fighter. Redgi earns his crown in the prologue by defeating his elder brother, the captain of the Royal Guard. He cements his claim by singlehandedly turning what was previously a Curb-Stomp Battle in the Frogs' favor around, slaughtering his way through their ranks before killing Green Wart in single combat. He further cements it in the Post-Ending content where he participates in a tournament where he defeats both an old comrade of his late father as well as his brother who came back for a rematch.
- Badass Adorable: Most of the Rats who fight alongside Redgi qualify, but Redgi himself takes the cake. He may be the runt of the litter, but he can still kick amphibian ass like nobody's business.
- Big Bad: Green Wart, the frog warchief who united all of the frog tribes to lay waste to the Rat Kingdom. He's also Redgi's final threat to face and the one who personally killed his father.
- Black-and-White Morality: All of the rats are heroic. All of the frogs are evil. Moles are somewhere in the middle, considering they help Redgi during his journey but also have their own series of bloody gladiator matches where moles will fight each other (or Redgi) to the death.
- Blood Sport: The Moleshevik Republic hosts the Arena Pit, where combatants fight to the death. Redgi can participate.
- Book Ends: You fight Denis immediately before both duels with Green Wart, and both duels see Green Wart throw his trident into one of Regi's relatives. Unlike King Rattus, Denis survives.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: The Frogs have been conducting experiments on captured Rat civilians, brainwashing them into zombie-like minions. They inflict this fate on Denis shortly before Redgi faces Green Wart.
- Break the Haughty: The first act is not a good time for Denis. After making it very plain that he views Redgi as a pushover and a runt, he gets handily thrashed by his little brother, thus losing his crown. He then fails to defend his father or his people, almost losing his kingdom. He spends most of the first half of the game drowning his sorrows in the Crimson Keep as a result. He gets better later.
- Cash Gate: A couple points throughout the game require you to shell out a hefty amount of gold coins before the plot can advance, and the only way to earn the cash is to fight and kill bosses. Redgi apparently plans to invent Taxation in the future to avoid this, but during the game Redgi has to earn it all himself.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Redgi fights Green Wart when he and the frogs invade the Crimson Keep. Regardless of how good the player is at dodging and counterattacking, the fight ends with Green Wart besting Redgi and knocking him out with little difficulty.
- Cycle of Revenge: Downplayed. Green Wart's obsession with taking revenge for his previous defeat to Rattus in the backstory is what drives his invasion, and in turn Redgi sets out to avenge his father's death at Green Wart's hands. However, with the possible exception of the passive Frog villagers, none of the Frogs are shown to have any humanizing or redeeming traits, so Redgi still comes off with the moral high ground between the two.
- Critical Existence Failure: Most bosses and enemies become increasingly bloody and wounded in appearance the lower their health gets. This doesn't impact their fighting abilities for most of them, merely giving them new, more savage animations. The only exception is Green Wart; he becomes progressively less dangerous after turning himself into a zombie, due to Redgi lopping off most of his limbs.
- Dark Secret: King Rattus was the one conducting experiments on the zombie virus, which is why the Royal Crypts were full of undead frogs and rats. His laboratory is in the Crimson Keep's attic; Redgi can access it after clearing the game and beating all of the opponents in the Arena, and gets to meet the end result of his father's research, Verminstein.
- Disney Death: Denis is impaled by Green Wart's spear during the final battle and seemingly killed. It isn't until after the battle that Redgi discovers Denis survived the blow.
- A Dog Named "Dog": King Rattus is a rat.
- Dual Boss: One of the optional gladiator matches in the Moleshevik Republic consists of fighting a Mighty Glacier and Fragile Speedster boss simultaneously.
- Establishing Character Moment: Green Wart is introduced by killing King Rattus, assaulting the Crimson Keep, having his frogs massacre various rat guards and civilians, and beating Redgi into unconsciousness. All of which happens during Redgi's coronation.
- Evil Smells Bad: All of the frogs are repeatedly mentioned for smelling bad or carrying a foul odor wherever they go. This is justified, however, given that the frogs' homeland is a brackish, fetid swamp.
- Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: There are cowgrubs, flealike insects that are spotted, moo, and give milk like cows.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Rat Kingdom has a Bavarian Alpine aesthetic to the architecture and some of its clothing.
- Fat Bastard: Some of the bosses are giant, corpulent frogs that carry huge shields and weapons. Green Wart himself is the biggest, fattest, and foulest of all amphibians, being the one personally responsible for razing the Rat Kingdom.
- Final Boss Preview: After Redgi defeats Denis as the Warm-Up Boss, Green Wart immediately invades the Crimson Keep and faces you in a Hopeless Boss Fight. During the same sequence, Green Wart's most prominent underlings also show up in the audience, watching the ill-fated duel between Redgi and Green Wart. By the time the two of them cross swords again, all of said underlings have fallen to Redgi's blade.
- Frankenstein's Monster: Verminstein, a horrifying amalgam monster created by King Rattus's unethical experiments, appears as a BonusBoss.
- Frog Men: The frog tribes all appear to be bipedal humanoid frogs.
- Gladiator Games: The Great Moleshevic Republic regularly engages in bloody combat matches where moles fight each other to the death.
- He's Back!: Denis spends the first half of the game drinking, ashamed over the frogs' invasion and letting his father get killed. He finally gets ahold of himself and takes up his weapon again after discovering a second planned invasion and helps Redgi repel it.
- Humanity's Wake: Implied. There are occasional signs of humans having once existed - the boss Bloki Magu uses a broken pair of human scissors as swords, for instance. There are also clearly manmade pipes in the sewers, and the Narrator mentions that rats moved out of the sewers long ago thanks to their ancesors (which in turn suggests an Uplifted Animal civilization).
- Hurricane of Puns: The Moles live in the Moleshevic Republic, and if you thought that was bad, you ain't seen nothing yet. You'll endure enough puns to moleverwhelm you before you see the Crimson Keep again. The Arena Pit amps it up to eleven, featuring Mole-themed Expies of famous Pro Wrestlers.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: The first encounter against Green Wart is impossible to win, with Redgi dealing negligible damage to him. Even with proper dodging and counterattacking, the fight will be ended with Green Wart using an attack to knock Redgi out.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: If equipped with a spear or greatsword, Redgi will execute enemies and bosses by impaling them in the abdomen or head. King Rattus is impaled by Green Wart's spear at the start of the game.
- Lemony Narrator: Courtesy of Doug Cockle. The narrator comments on Redgi's progress throughout his adventure. He maintains the same dry, overly-serious tone, whether he's discussing the death of Redgi's father and the slaughter of his subjects, or Redgi eating a burger. He's also not above a few dry quips.Narrator: (Audibly sarcastic) In the Golden Age of Redgi's kingdom, he would invent taxation.
- Lightning Bruiser: Some of the bosses in the game are hulking powerhouses who attack swiftly and mercilessly in spite of how burly and/or fat they are.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: One of the bosses, Hulk Molgan, is basically Hulk Hogan as a vicious naked mole rat.
- One-Man Army: Redgi does sometimes fight alongside friendly NPCs, but he does 90% of the heavy lifting in repelling the Frog Invasion, and kills Green Wart, and all of his generals, in single combat.
- Punny Name: Some of the named Frogs. The first proper boss Redgi faces is called Lans Alut.
- Reforged into a Minion: Denis is captured by the Frogs during the game's climax; he has a mind-control device clamped onto his face, and is forced into a primitive Mini-Mecha to face Redgi.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Played razor straight. The Frogs are disgusting, slimy, wart-covered savages who slaughter and eat civilians with zero hesitation. Even when you go to the Frog Lands and see neutral frog villagers who pose no threat to Redgi, the village they live and work in has dead Rats hung in the main square, at least one of whom is cooking in a stew pot just below.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Redgi slaughters his way through dozens of Frogs, Grubs, and other opponents in order to reach and kill Green Wart, the Frog who killed his father.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Redgi becomes King during the prologue, only to lose his father, his army, and his kingdom in rapid succession. He proceeds to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the Frogs, personally funding the reconstruction of his family's keep and aiding his subjects against the forces menacing them.
- Sapient Eat Sapient: The Frogs regularly skewer dead Rats, roasting and eating their corpses. A stew pot with a rat's tail dangling out of it can be found while clearing the frogs out of Turn Tail Mine. Strangely enough, the Rats don't do this in return, despite the well-known edibility of frog meat and the omnivorous tendencies of real rats.
- Shout-Out:
- The first three wrestlers Redgi can face in the Arena Pit are Mole Mysterio, Macho Mole, and Molekind. Molekind is even wearing a sock on one paw, and attacks with a folding chair. Macho Mole also enjoys shouting "OH YEAH!" while fighting you. Later on, the player can face Hulk Molgan. The Arena commentator is a mole rat version of Jabba The Hutt.
- In the Crypts, Redgi can fight the BonusBoss Ratnor Rodentson, who is an expy of Thor. He even wields lightning-based powers and fights with a hammer. The hammer in question is one of the best one-handed weapons in the entire game, if you can earn it by killing Ratnor… although sadly, you can't use any lightning magic once you have it.
- The Rat Kingdom's seat of power is the Crimson Keep. A large stone fortress with a predominantly red color scheme, staffed by Badass Adorable rodents? Sounds familiar…
- In addition to Redwall Abbey, the Crimson Keep also doubles as a reference to the Red Keep from A Song of Ice and Fire. Both works also contain an underground community called Moletown, although one is more literal than the other.
- Unexplained Recovery: The Captain of the Guard dies in the second assault on the Crimson Keep, but appears in the audience in the Arena post-game, apparently alive and well.
- We Are as Mayflies: When Redgi encounters a hermit turtle, he's shocked that the being claims to have met Redgi's father in his youth, as Redgi himself is already an adult of two years old, and wonders if these beings can really live for that long.
- World of Funny Animals: The game's setting is similar to Redwall in that all of the animals act and behave as such, but still wear clothes and talk similar to human beings. That being said, there's no human presence in the game in the present day.
- You Dirty Rat!: Inverted. The rats are the heroes, not the villains. The worst thing Redgi or any of the rats do is execute their victims after besting them in combat. They are Combat Pragmatists, however. Completing the Arena DLC plays with this trope; the Crimson Keep's attic contains a laboratory where King Rattus was conducting twisted research into zombification. His experiments were successful enough to produce Verminstein, a horrifying amalgamation between a frog and a rat. That being said, it's clear none of the other rats knew about this.
- You Killed My Father: Green Wart is responsible for murdering Redgi's father during his coronation.
