A Quick Look at a Few Titles That Caught Our Eye
We love a Steam game festival don't we? Once again I have been enjoying my time trying demos for games I have never heard of and games I have been eager to see the next "big thing" from. There are many flight focused games in the currently ongoing Steam Planes, Trains and Automobiles Fest - certainly too many to type out here without the entire festival passing us by. So before its too late, I've decided to write about a few that have immediately caught my eye.
Normally I would immediately send any flight game that involves designing aircraft and seeing how they fly directly to our now official aeronautical engineer Caio Barreto. But I found myself so sucked into Aviassembly I gave myself a chance to try and design a decent aircraft. I think what surprised me about this game was that while it is not as eye wateringly detailed as some of its fellow aircraft design titles, it has a task based story. I figured I would slap together a semi-silly aircraft to see how the game would handle center of gravity or a set of weirdly placed horizontal stabilizers.
The next thing I knew I was asked to fly to a hospital to help distribute medicine. Travelling would unveil more of the world map which seems to be many times larger than I imagined it would be. Requests to deliver food to cut off communities and wood to repair damaged infrastructure. Distant geopins for things like a desert lingered on the horizon across an ocean. The farther these quests asked me to fly, the more I would use any earnings I received from completing quests to research new parts and modify my aircraft to reach farther distances, improve landing gear, increase cargo hauling capability. This seemingly "simple" aircraft builder suddenly had more depth than I was prepared for. A pleasant surprise. I'm going to put some more time into this title before saying too much more.
It just so happens that our most recent interview was with Brent from Curious Dog Games. We discussed his development journey with Blue Sky Aces; the retro inspired, stylized World War 1 flight simulator that is both easy to pick up and learn, but with enough realism to represent aircraft of the era well enough. My first impression of the February 2023 demo remained with me over a year later as I waited to see how it would develop without leaning deep into full on simulation. We got a brief preview of that the next update would look like in the interview, so now I get hands on with it.
In my opinion the new Fighter Sweep mission is a competitor for the current signature mission of Blue Sky Aces. The choice is between this mission and the all out chaotic air battle seen in "The Big Battle" mission. Unlike the single player missions with pre-set parameters, Fighter Sweep is defined as a "mission builder"; a sandbox style mission designed to let players learn how to fly aircraft and test their new equipment. A training mission to a degree. Players can define the type and quantity of enemy aircraft they will fight against, but beyond that it is an open ended experience.
The land is populated by many friendly and enemy land units. Machine gun nests, airbases, observation balloons, trains and the sprawling no man's land trenches full of infantry that have defined the entire Great War. The experience of taking off from the grass airfield with soldiers waving for good luck, then getting airborne above the sprawling country side of fields, trees, villages, bridges - it changes the way this game feels. With no clearly defined mission, players can free flight on the friendly side of the frontline or cross no man's land and take the fight to the enemy in the sky and on the ground.
After a few missions with each aircraft currently available in game, I can say I prefer the new weightiness and slightly reduced all around performance of each aircraft. The overall acceleration and engine power performance for every aircraft is still high enough to keep this game very approachable for even the newest flight game player, but I appreciate it being a bit more challenging to master as these are historically rather underpowered aircraft.
I sincerely hope that a few more of these open ended mission builder missions are added to the game to let players engage with Blue Sky Aces in their own style. It is an interesting prospect for this game.
Mirage is described as a world on the brink of chaos being invaded by mechanical alien invaders. Both fast-paced combat and exploration is encouraged. There in some pretty unusual landscapes for a flight game. Not in a bad way. It certainly stokes my urge to wander the map and fly at low altitudes to see what exactly is going on. But with timers running and a hit list of enemies to defeat, much of the terrain passes in a few blinks of an eye. The developer has intentionally designed this game to be a "no intro screens, no 10 minutes of splash screens before the game starts" type of experience. That is immediately evident when booting the demo up. It immediately puts players into a mission with no menus at all. Just a list of known enemies and places to repair and resupply available on the pause screen. Honestly, it could use a bit more context in the demo. Its Steam store page explains more of the setting than the game itself does.
The aircraft itself is a unique design based on a traditional biplane design with a pusher propeller and a pair of vertically oriented propellers that allow for the aircraft to fly at very low speeds and even hover in place. Control wise, the biplane's controller or keyboard inputs can have their sensitivity adjusted, but that is about it.. This seemingly coal powered (!) aircraft does seem to burn through its propellant faster than I always expect it to, but repair/resupply points are constantly available to offset the fuel burn.
I feel like Mirage needs a bit more content explaining its settings and some type of aiming reticle to assist players in aiming at the sometimes small and immensely fast moving targets that require a large amount of lead to potentially shoot down. It is clear that the developer designed this game to be a tough experience, which isn't a terrible thing. But I think a few very minor user friendly interfaces may be needed. I don't necessarily have an opinion either way on Mirage, but I am curious if the demo represents the full game 1:1.
Personally, I've been waiting for update 0.3.0 of the Nova Squadron alpha demo for quite some time. My February 2023 first impression of the 0.1.0 demo for this 23rd century Jovian arcade flight game was positive. Our follow up developer interview further spiked my interest in the game as future plans were discussed. After months watching every post on their social media account, the time to jump into the new demo is now.
There are some high profile updates the player will notice immediately, but I would like to point out the less upfront update. Behind the action, there has been a full balance rework of the game. With its code and internal systems now in a stable state, they are ready to be built upon for future updates. This is the type of stuff I feel as though people should be very excited since stable development platforms usually result in more frequent/easier updates for player's to enjoy. Onto the tangible stuff:
Mid-mission reinforcement waves now randomly add more allies and enemies. Even when players are absolutely ripping through enemy air forces, occasional additions of new enemies to fight seems like a good thing, but with them happening at unknown intervals, it can become a slog if players lose focus of the primary objective. It certainly keeps the action consistent.
A much needed support option has been added for players to augment their offensive abilities. The setting of this game puts the player and their allies on the backfoot. They are constantly outnumbered. In the previous demo update, some missions were rather hard to complete within their set time frames. At times absolutely everything had to got right to even have a chance to complete the mission. Once enough enemies are destroyed to fill the support gauge, the newly introduced support option targets up to 9 targets around the player to be attacked by nearby units or by an orbital railgun satellite network above Jupiter.
Finally, new aircraft models for enemy units are finally included in the game. With the opposing forces now receiving new models, they also receive new weapons and combat roles. Gone is the one-size fits all fighter. Now learning the different types of enemies you face in Nova Squadron means a bit more.
I am shaking my head smiling while writing this. When I saw that the starter aircraft was the "Paperclip Plane" with clothespin blasters and wooden stick missiles, I immediately had to try. Paper planes, rubber band powered wooden planes, RC type aircraft - you remember the ones that you used to pretend to have epic battles with. This game takes those memories and builds them up into a fast paced player vs player game that mainly focuses on dogfighting.
The flight model is pure arcade, which makes sense considering the subject matter. Instantaneous roll rates and instant throttle response. With there being no engines to manage fuel is not much of a concern and altitude is capped by either the environment of each level or a visible barrier at higher altitudes. My initial impression is that high speed and instantaneous turns are part of survival. This high speed combat is augmented by picking up power ups throughout the map and flying through rings that grant temporary high speed boosts. For now, playing on keyboard and mouse is ideal though a gamepad can be configured with a bit of effort. But honestly the speed and twitchiness of aircraft movement seems to be best handled on a keyboard and mouse for now.
There are other game modes like free flight and time trails are included, but he main focus is Domination. In Domination, players attack or defend specific objects in teams. Their destruction or protection defines who wins. When all objects are destroyed players have a chance to take on a boss-type enemy with a massive health bar a multiple defenses. Destruction of the boss enemy further boosts team score. Besides other players to contend with, local non-player character units attack all players. In no other flight game have I found the worst anti-aircraft unit to be squirrels throwing tree nuts. This is easily the most accurate AA fire that no amount of barrel rolling, high speed dashing or slash attacking will help players evade. Even knocking the squirrels down is only temporary, as they will get right back up and continue their laser accurate tree nut deployment.
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Curiously, there is a degree of material gathering and crafting for players to unlock new aircraft by building them. The traditional in-game shop is replaced with a real world style model shop where players used mouse and keyboard to walk around the building, look at models, buy components and construct aircraft on the crafting table. It sounds unusual, but fits the fantasy toy airplane concept well.
The turn based dogfighting strategy game that I thought at one-time was a bit too much of a foreign idea to work for an air combat title. The June 2024 demo changed my official opinion on the concept to being a firm believer that this type of strategy not only works, but can work well. The September 2024 demo, like the demo from a few months ago, primarily focuses on demonstrating the gameplay concept by providing a variety of easy to jump into missions to place players directly in the action.
The core of the new updates focus on new aircraft like the Me-110 heavy fighter, player controlled Me-109 fighters and a new missions in which players can control Luftwaffe aircraft or fight against these aircraft. Some of the new missions include trying to win furballs of 12 aircraft. Even in a turn by turn basis, that is not easy at all.
The blog about this update mentions that there are "too many bugfixes, tweaks and performance improvements to mention", but what players will benefit from heavily is a user interface upgrade for menus and gameplay. The improved UI in the Replay system and Review phase of a mid-match screen is simple, polished and rather useful. Some terms in the old UI were a bit unclear to understand at first, but could be learned over time. Now they are easy to understand at first glance.
You can try these and many more aircraft inclusive demos I did not discuss in this article by visiting Steam Planes, Trains and Automobiles Fest from September 16th to September 23rd, 2024.
About the Writer
Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile.
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