As the name implies, Ironband is an ironman game. You can never go up stairs, only down. You start in the dungeon and can never get back to town to go shopping. You will have to pick up all your supplies in the dungeon.

There are no classes in Ironband - all characters can fight, shoot, sneak and cast spells. You can specialise by raising the appropriate stats (e.g. Intelligence and Wisdom for casters). The other stats are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Agility, Stealth, Perception and Luck.

You will notice you have quite a few SP and spells are cheap. However the downside is that SP do not regenerate naturally. You only get your SP back when you go down stairs. This causes some interesting tactical play. Wands and magical talismans can help, as can some rare magic items.

Why should you play Ironband?

1. No more 'game of shopping' - you never need to pick stuff up just to sell it.
2. 'Too much junk' is pretty much fixed (with changes to item probabilities, all characters able to use all items, some crap items removed, changes to identification, etc - and with no shops you need to keep a lot more of the stuff you find!)
3. Many of the problems which make normal Ironman games very challenging are fixed in Ironband (for example, stat drain is a problem but not a huge one, and spellbooks are more resistant to fire).
4. No more warriors wielding whips - go for a heavy weapon to do more damage (if your Strength is high enough).
5. No more boring stat gain period - your stats increase throughout the entire game without needing to collect potions.
6. Having nine stats is cool especially when you can decide which ones to raise. No more 'all endgame characters look the same'.
7. Lots of interesting resource allocation issues because your SPs only regenerate when you go downstairs. Will you use your precious SPs for a big fight, or to create some food for later, or to identify the items you found, or...? [1]