Iron Lotus

How to play

Story is selected by default: take half incoming damage and continue from the current stage start after your last life, keeping score, EXP and level. Classic keeps the original damage and limited lives. Choose either mode on the character-select screen; special moves cost the same HP in both.

Iron Lotus is an original feudal-Japan beat-em-up. When a warlord seizes the daimyō's daughter to force a marriage that would hand him the province, three sworn protectors set out after her — through a burning village, lantern-lit castle town, a forge lit with molten light, and a rope bridge over misty rapids, all the way to the warlord's keep.

Choose your protector: the Shinobi, a balanced fighter with a short-sword combo and a dash-through strike; the Kunoichi, fastest on her feet, with a chain-kick string and a wall-spring dive; or the Sōhei, a slow, heavy bruiser who grapples, piledrives, and slams the ground.

Combat lives on the depth lane: you move freely along and into the scene, and a strike lands only when you and your target share the same depth. Chain four-step combos, juggle airborne enemies up to a hard limit, grab and throw, and smash breakables for food and weapons.

Every defeated enemy earns EXP. Six level segments raise your health and unlock your moves as you fight through five rounds and fifteen stages to the warlord's keep.

The story

Iron Lotus opens on a prologue, follows the princess between rounds, and closes on an epilogue. Every story beat is skippable, and every scene remains a readable card when reduced motion is on.

The ending is below. Skip to Controls if you would rather find it in the game.

At the gates

Boss conversations pause the fight. Tap A, press J/Z, or use your gamepad attack button when the continue prompt appears. Use up/down to choose a reply when offered. Different fighters hear different lines.

1. Bandit Chief: This road pays tribute to my blade.
2. Your fighter: The villages owe you nothing.
3. Bandit Chief: Will you kneel, or draw steel?
4. Your fighter: My blade serves those you have wronged.
5. Your fighter: Lay down your blade. Leave these hills.
6. Bandit Chief: You would spare me?
7. Bandit Chief: Then let the mountain judge us.
8. Your fighter: So be it.
9. Bandit Chief: Watch how a mountain wolf moves.
10. Bandit Chief: Mercy has made your guard soft.
11. Your fighter: A wolf still leaves tracks.
12. Bandit Chief: My scouts watched you cross the pass.
13. Your fighter: Then they saw enough.
14. Bandit Chief: What brings you to my gate?
15. Your fighter: Your men burned fields they could not take.
16. Bandit Chief: Enough!
17. Your fighter: Tell me where the princess was taken.
18. Bandit Chief: Ask the lord who paid for this road.
19. Your fighter: First, I pass you.
20. Blade Dancers: Two blades. One shadow. No way through.
21. Your fighter: Every shadow breaks at dawn.
22. Your fighter: Your steps betray the space between you.
23. Blade Dancers: Then step closer.
24. Your fighter: I only need one opening.
25. Your fighter: I know the rhythm of hidden blades.
26. Blade Dancers: Then hear the last beat of ours.
27. Your fighter: Your rhythm ends here.
28. Blade Dancers: The bridge belongs to our house.
29. Your fighter: A bridge belongs to those who cross it.
30. Blade Dancers: Even stone yields to sharp steel.
31. Your fighter: Stone remembers every careless strike.
32. Blade Dancers: Let us test that memory.
33. Blade Dancers: Our lord waits beyond the river.
34. Your fighter: Then clear the crossing.
35. Blade Dancers: Only our blades may grant passage.
36. Your fighter: I will earn it.
37. Armored Smith: The forge has tempered my resolve.
38. Armored Smith: No blade can pierce this armor.
39. Your fighter: Every suit has a seam.
40. Armored Smith: I hammered each seam shut myself.
41. Your fighter: You cannot hammer fear out of iron.
42. Armored Smith: Fear?
43. Armored Smith: These hands shaped the keep's gates.
44. Your fighter: And chained its people.
45. Armored Smith: The lord gave my forge a purpose.
46. Your fighter: Choose a better one.
47. Armored Smith: The temple bells cannot reach here.
48. Your fighter: I carry their warning with me.
49. Armored Smith: Then drown it in the sound of steel.
50. Your fighter: Try.
51. Armored Smith: You have crossed a costly threshold.
52. Armored Smith: Will you turn back now?
53. Your fighter: I did not come this far to turn.
54. Armored Smith: Then pay in steel.
55. Your fighter: Open the gate. Let your people go.
56. Armored Smith: My oath binds this gate to my hands.
57. Your fighter: An oath can be reforged.
58. Armored Smith: Prove it.
59. Your fighter: I will.
60. Armored Smith: Beyond this gate, your courage ends.
61. Warlord: A lone shadow enters my keep.
62. Your fighter: To end your reign.
63. Warlord: Your silent steps fooled my guards.
64. Warlord: Even a temple warrior bows to a lord.
65. Your fighter: I bow to the suffering you ignore.
66. Warlord: Then share it with those at my feet.
67. Warlord: I united these lands with iron.
68. Your fighter: With fear.
69. Warlord: Fear keeps the banners still.
70. Your fighter: A still banner cannot hide a storm.
71. Warlord: The princess will witness your fall.
72. Your fighter: She will witness yours.
73. Warlord: Draw, then. Let the keep decide.
74. Your fighter: For every village.
75. Armored Smith: My forge stands between you and the keep.
76. Your fighter: Then it falls.
77. Bandit Chief: No traveler leaves my mountain untested.
78. Your fighter: Your guards never saw the dawn coming.

Controls

Player options

Pause, mute, or reduce motion at any time from the game's control buttons — below the game in portrait and beside it on desktop. Iron Lotus respects your system reduced-motion setting (reducing motion also turns off vibration and controller rumble), keeps every action on real touch, mouse, keyboard, and controller controls, and stays fully playable with simple vector shapes if enhanced art is ever unavailable.