Hyperspace Dogfights

Experience the frantic fighter craft combat. The roguelite elements give me an unparalleled power fantasy, but at the same time I'm often still needing to take risks to defeat my enemies at many points in my runs. Controlling the ship, challenges, variety of upgrades, and weapons make it difficult for the game to bore me.

I'm making this review as someone who normally is turned off by plane/vehicle games, and as someone who has not played let alone heard of Luftrausers. With all of this going against the game, this has still become one of my favorite roguelikes in a while. Considering I hadn't played anything like this, it was a bit tough to figure out how to even get started with the game, but after fiddling around with the controls, it just kind of clicked, and I started having a lot more fun and feeling way more in control, even with how unconventional movement is. Runs in the game are immensely satisfying, you unlock different upgrades and even [b]characters and stages[/b] mostly by just getting better at the game. While most people would argue that this would cause the game to fall under the 'rogue-lite' category, I'd still consider the game a 'rogue-like' considering that upgrades don't necessarily innately make your character stronger right off the bat, it just gives you more avenues to consider while playing a run. With that being said, I love the upgrade system in the game. Most passives have an upside and a downside to them, which can drastically change how you approach combat as well as how you try and make it work with the plane as well as weapon and active you are using. There were a lot of items I initially shied away from because of their downsides that I grew to appreciate because I found an interesting use case for them. Weapons themselves are super fun to use as well, mainly because of how unorthodox some of them can be. The weapons still feel militaristic, but it's funny to, say, drag down enemy fighters to make them crash into the ground using whips, or have a laser lightshow around your plane that inflicts 15 different debuffs. It really makes you [i] feel[/i] like a sentient war crime. This is a roguelike that respects your time. While the visual style (which I personally love) can feel a bit cluttered, there are a lot of options to turn down some of the clutter, like screen shake or glitch effects. I really enjoyed this game, and I think for what it's worth, the game holds a lot of depth. Definitely recommend getting this if you're interested. I cannot believe I found this game from a Faster Than Light mod.

A wonderful and vastly underappreciated gem by an underappreciated studio. You'll find yourself dazzled by an expert mix of both graphhics and high-readability combat. If you liked luftrausers or Jet Lancer than this will scratch that itch and then some.

This is probably one of if not the best hidden gems I've ever found and played, I just love how many different weapons and bosses there are along with all the elite variants of the bosses and the modifiers for the weapons, the process of learning about all of these things without having the ability to look anything up makes one feel like they're truly treading new ground. Most games can't be expected to convince me to actually bother with 100%ing them, but with this game I always found myself wanting to discover what every item might do, and with so many items to unlock and then discover, even the worst items and weapons feel valuable just because you can say "wow, this item is astonishingly bad, I wonder if I can do anything with it". The game also comes with optional things like hitlag, glitch effects, and a pitch modulator for repeated actions to make combat more satisfying, you might think hitlag is a bad thing but trust me it is plenty worth it. Starting up a brand new game from most other developers just doesn't feel the same.

A well-hidden gem- when I first played it back in late 2018, it was almost totally unknown. I've come back to it with a ritual rhythm, time after time, on long trips and after long days, craving one more chance to make a mad dash to the finish. There's something special here, somewhere in between the acid-trip colors, harmonic tunes, and the nova star that threatens impending apocalypse Big things- the tight gameplay, the enemies and the surprisingly plucky fight they put up, the fun flavoured level objectives, the awesome weapon and upgrade complement. Small things- the way enemy pilots shout out your actions and curse your name when you best them, the way your ship kicks up procedural plumes of dust when you skim the ground. The soft thumps on your hull as you tear through an enemy vessel, or take glancing hits from debris The long-term progression of unlocks is great, and the postgame extra difficulty modes all put a pretty fun spin on the gameplay. I like the explosions. the debris system is pretty cool. Also, the hitlag is very crunchy. Try it! NITPICKING BELOW Once you start approaching 75% and higher item unlock completion, there's a little too much Bad Synergy and "Big Downside + small upside" considering the sheer number of items you pick up and the frequency of unknown item drops. Once every few runs, a build gets slowly, painfully choked to death, which can be less than fun. I love hitlag, but the hitlag can be a little TOO enthusiastic. You can turn it down, but the default setting should probably be lower.

Now I am royally, *Royally* awful at this game (or at least I think so). But with that being said, holy hell. The lore is awesome, the gameplay is insanely addicting, I still can't tell if I should be using pure keyboard or keyboard and mouse controls and I love every second of it. Get the game, trust me it's worth it

Me playing Luftrausers: "Wow this is really fun, i wonder if there are other games like this." Me playing Jetlancer: "It's not very Luftrausers like but its still really fun" Me playing Hyperspace Dogfights: "Wow this is more like Luftrausers, so why am I not having fun?" I think it has to do with the small ship size, small bullet size, and lack of speed. Playing this game remind me of the old Atari game "Asteroids" or the Apple II game "Dogfight". Which i guess makes sense given the title.

Luftrasers x Risk of Rain, with incredibly good feels - I never knew how much I needed hitlag in my life before this game.

This game slaps. I'm terrible at the game and I still enjoy it. Buy.

Hyperspace dogfights is a hidden gem that roguelike enjoyers will love. In fact I recommend all of the games made by sleeper games so far!