Vlambeer has just released LUFTRAUSERS for PSVita and PS3. Vlambeer is known for being a two-man indie game studio with a focus on quick arcade style games from the Netherlands. You might recognize them as the team that made made “Super Crate Box” and “Ridiculous Fishing”.
Man, I played a demo of this a year or two back at PAX Prime.
Impressions then were good! I really liked the physics and updated ASTEROIDS feel. The form then was just a demo, with brief mention of the eventual inclusion of customizing your plane with different body types, abilities, and weapons. I was sold then, so I picked it up for my Vita as soon as it was released.
Completely worth the $10 for cross-buy on Sony systems. With a small memory size (60MB?) it installed and was ready to play nearly instantly. It gives you a heads up that it saves all the time, so you can just quit whenever. As this isn’t a story driven game, I found this perfect to just pick up, play for a couple of minutes, then set down. The only problem with that is I played it for over an hour my first time and didn’t want to put it down.
Mixing plane parts to have a body that allowed me to take no damage from physical crashes, a laser beam that sweeps in front of the plan, and an engine that propels me with shots fired backwards destroying tailing aircraft was phenomenally fun. It looks like there are at least 125 of these combinations (I think they all have unique names!).
You can play the original Flash version (pretty much a demo, or meaty prototype) here http://not.vlambeer.com/luftrauser/
A full version will come to PC/Steam in the future, I believe.
Some wrap-up thoughts:
the music is rad
it felt like I was controlling the Spike’s Swordfish II from Cowboy Bebop, likely because of its stalling and other WW1/2 dogfight inspiration
