Edit 12/23/19: I gave this another shot today. Looks like the dev hasn't been seen in 7 months and the rest of the players haven't been seen in 4 or 5.
Before bailing out, the dev did fix some things, most notably adding color to the planes so it was easier to recognize them. You're no longer staring directly into the sun if you're the tail gunner, and smoke from your plane will no longer completely obscure your vision. He also added a number of different bombers you could be a crew member of along with different scenarios, like the North Atlantic, North Africa, and Iwo Jima.
But the silliness is still too much:
In the North Atlantic scenario, the background is so dark that you can't see any enemy planes.
You're also going to have a hard time seeing enemy planes if they are below you, with the sea as a background (which is most of the time).
There's a big marker saying 'air target' with an arrow, to help you see enemy planes. But the marker itself often obscures the plane it is trying to show you.
All enemy planes regardless of location or nationality have Japanese insignia and paint.
Sometimes your guns will fire where the sight is pointing, sometimes they fire really high of that. The gunsight is completely irrelevant in fact and you just have to watch where the tracers are going.
You also can't control the pilot, which is fine because this game is about being a gunner. The problem is that your AI pilot only flies in a straight line at low level, and will fly you into the side of a hill the minute you get over land.
The game crashes to desktop whenever a scenario ends.
It looks like we can close the book on this one. It was a good idea and might have been a good game with a lot of work, but Shivering Sky has been abandoned and that's that.
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My March review, if for some odd reason you want to see that, is here:
This isn't EA. This is a kickstarter. There's no game here ATM, only a concept albeit a good one.
You start out on a carrier. You can have up to 18 other B-25's in your formation, although from what I can see, none of them shoot at enemy aircraft. After taking off you're instantly swarmed by enemy fighters... I guess they come in waves of 12, one after another after another. They're all designated as A6Ms, although to me it looks like there's A6Ms and some kind of floatplane out there. Maybe not... the floatplanes might have been other B-25's which had been shot down and were missing tails or other parts. It's hard to tell because you never see any aircraft except as a silhouette, and if you're playing as a tail gunner, the sun is constantly in your eyes.
There are so many enemy fighters coming at you at once that attempting to play in real time is hopeless. I just held down shift the entire time I played, which slows things down to around .3.
There's a command you can issue called, "Request Escort". But if I ever received an escort, I couldn't tell.
Anyway, you've got 5 different guns you can man, a nose gun, 2 waist guns, a mid upper turret and the tail guns.
I tried the mid upper turret first. IMO it moves too slowly for the game. The turret movement speed might be somewhat historically accurate, but IRL you weren't taking on 6 or 7 enemy fighters at the same time, with no notifications as to which direction they were coming from unless you were looking right at them. You simply can't rotate quickly enough to engage more than one or two enemy planes at a time or scan the entire sky, as the game moves too fast.
I tried the rear guns next. This was better and I shot down some planes there, although the bullets seemed to fire well high of where the sight was actually aiming. The problem with the rear guns is that your aircraft is always flying with its tail to the sun. In addition, it is getting hit constantly by enemy fire, and whenever it gets hit, your screen is completely darkened by smoke and sparks. As such, it is nearly impossible to see enemy aircraft which approach you directly from the rear, and nearly impossible to see any enemy aircraft anywhere when your own aircraft is taking damage.
I could, possibly, see this game being OK in 6 months if the dev keeps up with it. Reduce the amount of enemy planes coming at you to a somewhat realistic level. Give the player some sense of where they are on the mission. Have friendly aircraft fire at enemies. I mean, the idea is alright. But no, not yet. Not even close.
I'll also add that the game gave me a CTD every time the mission ended, as well as half of the time I selected a menu button other than 'start'. About 5 crashes in 20 minutes of play which doesn't get it done even in EA.
Check in on this in 6 months. Right now there is absolutely nothing here.
