Pixel-art air-defense strategy

HOLD
THE SKY

Track every contact. Count every missile. Miss nothing.

Waves of rockets, drones and fire balloons are inbound on your cities. You have a budget, a radar picture, and seconds to decide what gets intercepted - and what burns.

▸ Play Free on Itch.io How it plays PC · ITCH.IO · FREE TO PLAY
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INTERCEPTED — LIVE
0
IMPACTS
0
ACTIVE TRACKS
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INTERCEPT RATE
[ 01 / GAMEPLAY ]

Sixty seconds of sky.
Four decisions a second.

IronGrid is not about building a maze. It is about reading a radar picture under pressure and spending limited money on the right intercepts.

01

Read the sky

Every contact has a speed, an altitude and a target. The minimap sweep tells you what's coming. The trajectory tells you when.

02

Prioritize

You can't shoot everything. A rocket aimed at open desert is a gift. A splitter over your factory is a crisis.

03

Intercept

Auto mode handles the routine. The hard shots you take yourself - click the threat, lead the target, spend the missile.

04

Rebuild

Every launch costs money. Factories print it, upgrades sharpen it. Sell, reposition, harden - before the next wave.

[ 02 / DEFENSE GRID ]

Five systems.
One budget.

Cheap mass for cheap threats. Precision for the fast movers. Industry to pay for both. Every sprite below is straight from the game.

Iron Dome launcher sprite
Short range

Iron Dome

Magazine-fed workhorse. Cheap per shot, fast to reload, everywhere you need it.

Range
Fire rate
Cost
David's Sling launcher sprite
Medium range

David's Sling

Bigger reach, bigger price. Covers the gaps Iron Dome can't stretch to.

Range
Fire rate
Cost
Arrow launcher sprite
High altitude

Arrow

The splitter killer. Reaches what nothing else can - kill it high, or fight five warheads low.

Range
Fire rate
Cost
Iron Beam laser sprite
Directed energy

Iron Beam

No projectile. No miss. Hold the lock and the beam ends whatever it's holding - if it stays in envelope.

Range
Lock speed
Cost
Factory sprite
Economy

Factory

Prints the money that keeps your tubes loaded. Can't be built near cities. Enemies know it's there.

Income
Armor
Risk
[ 03 / THREAT BOARD ]

Know what's coming.
It already knows where you live.

Six threat families, each demanding a different answer. The grid that stops one gets shredded by another. All sprites animated from the actual game sheets.

Class · Rocket

Qassam

Cheap, slow, and never alone. Ignore the ones falling short - that's the whole skill.

SPD █░░ALT ██░DMG ██░
Class · Rocket

Grad

Faster, meaner, flatter arc. The window to intercept is short and closing.

SPD ██░ALT ███DMG ███
Class · MIRV

Splitter

One track becomes five on terminal descent. Kill it high with Arrow - or drown.

SPD ███ALT ███DMG ███
Class · UAV

Shahed

Weaves a sine path that breaks lazy intercept solutions, then rushes the city.

SPD ██░ALT █░░DMG ███
Class · UAV

Bomber

Circles your city launching missiles from orbit - then dives in itself. Rude.

SPD ██░ALT ██░DMG ███
Class · Aerostat

Fire Balloon

Slow, cheap, almost harmless. Ignore it - and learn exactly why you shouldn't.

SPD █░░ALT ███DMG █░░
[ 04 / CODEX ]

Play the game.
Learn the real engineering.

Every unit carries a Codex entry: the pixel version on one side, the real-world system that inspired it on the other - honestly labeled, from REAL to FICTIONAL.

IN GAME

Iron Dome

Your first battery and your last line. 4-round magazine, cost per shot, manual fire on right-click for when auto mode picks the wrong missile.

Iron Dome in-game sprite
REAL WORLD

The Real System

An operational short-range interceptor with a ~90% claimed success rate, built to decide mid-flight which incoming rockets actually threaten lives.

Real-world interceptor launch photo
● REAL ● INSPIRED BY ● GAME ELEMENT ● FICTIONAL — every entry tells you which
[ 05 / OPERATIONS ]

Three ways to lose sleep.

From your first manual intercept to the wave that finally breaks you.

01

TUTORIAL

Place a battery, take manual control, make your first intercept, and keep a factory alive through one long minute of pressure.

10 MIN · OPERATOR CERTIFIED
02

CAMPAIGN

Multi-phase attack waves and survival timers that feel three seconds too long. Fail, retry with a penalty economy, adapt, push on.

STORY · 5+ SECTORS
03

ENDLESS

The spawner never stops accelerating - speed, altitude, burst size. Your best layout against a curve with no ceiling.

SURVIVAL · HOW LONG CAN YOU HOLD?
04

MULTIPLAYER

Attack and defend with your friends - one side launches the waves, the other scrambles to intercept. See who is the best general.

PVP · FRIEND OR FOE?
[ 06 / ABOUT US ]

Three of us.
One obsession.

IronGrid started with a question: can a tower defense game make you feel the tension of a real intercept decision? We've been answering it ever since - one system, one sprite, one playtest at a time.

Pixel-art portrait of Omer Kirsh

OMER KIRSH

CEO · BizDev · Defense Tech

The mind behind the concept - defense tech background, operational instincts, and the vision that connects the game to the real world. The glue between the team, the tech, and everything outside the codebase.

Pixel-art portrait of Nadav Hanam

NADAV HANAM

CTO · Unity Expert · Lead Developer

The engine behind the engine. Main game developer and Unity authority - if it runs at 4x speed with forty tracks in the air and doesn't drop a frame, that's Nadav.

Pixel-art portrait of Andrey Isupov

ANDREY ISUPOV

Pixel Art · UI · Creative Director

Every sprite on this page is his - the launchers, the drones, the city you're defending. The one who breaks the mold: responsible for the originality and the creative decisions that make IronGrid look like nothing else.

We're a small indie team that loves strategy, systems, and tension - games where a calm decision under pressure is the most powerful weapon you have. IronGrid is us building the game we kept wishing existed.

Free to play · available now

Take the watch.

IronGrid is live on Itch.io right now - no cost, no account required. Download, hold the line, then come back and tell us which wave broke you. It's three of us. We read everything.

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Back us · signal boost

Support the mission.

Two ways to push the mission forward - fund the next update, or help the world discover what Israeli minds build when the stakes are real.

◈

Back the developers

IronGrid is free. If it earns a place on your screen, a small donation keeps the three of us building. Every supporter earns a permanent spot on the Wall of Defenders - immortalized in-game, forever.

▸ Support on Itch.io
Name your price · $25 suggested · Wall of Defenders
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Spread the word

IronGrid tells the story of Israeli air-defense from the inside - the engineering, the trade-offs, the human cost of every interceptor fired. Every share helps that story reach someone who has never heard it.

EARLY SUPPORTERS EARN A PLACE ON THE WALL OF DEFENDERS — IN-GAME, FOREVER.