Vanguard Knights

Literally one of the best 1-man projects I've ever seen! The graphics, gameplay, and story is the shining part about the game. Voice acting here is a little wonky but at times the dialouge sounded funny! Looking forward to the future projects that come!

Allow me to preface this by saying that I'm not too familiar with games like this, but this one has been an enjoyable experience thus far and I think it's worth the money. I do feel there are a lot of areas for improvement, in fact there's this one section of the game about 2 hours in that just highlighted all the little issues with one half of the gameplay. To start, the game has two modes of gameplay which switch around at certain missions: Mission 1 introduces you with a nice, simple, Starfox-Style on-rails shooter, then Mission 2 introduces you to the more exciting Dogfighting style. In On-Rails missions you can not only move around a certain areas, but also control where your guns aim with the right stick (or mouse I assume, I used a controller so all reference to control will be in that format), the game starts you off with a decently paced tutorial, and everything is explained to a good standard, you'll know generally how everything works by the end. There's not that much wrong with the On-Rails sections apart from when the screen becomes really busy with bullets and lasers and stuff in later missions, you can very easily lose your reticle and sometimes even yourself when the visuals get a little overwhelming, I feel the game allows you and your reticle to go a bit far out of the screen boundaries and as such you can sometimes miss or lose track of a lot of things. Dogfighting is where I had most of my issues I think, it's very fun but also has a lot of little set backs that begin to rear their heads in later missions. The movement scheme is fine, it works the way it's supposed to and once you get the hang of things you can start zipping around and blasting things into the next galaxy, however I do find that it's extremely easy to lose track of your targets and even get totally blindsided by projectiles with little warning. There is a sphere around your fighter that shows where enemies are, strong enemies, and even projectiles by polarity, the issue with this though is that half the time this sphere is completely ignored due to the impossibility of keeping track of it during combat, your fighter zips around the screen at such high speeds and there's so much going on and so much environment to take in that the nav-sphere just gets completely smothered by everything else, it only ever really comes in handy when things are moderately calm and you can take a moment to re-orient yourself and check where your remaining enemies are. I feel this element of the gameplay would've served far better as a little compass on the HUD where it was always in your view and couldn't be smothered by everything else, it needn't be too large either as long as it conveys generally where things are coming from, as a general idea of what's happening is better than no idea at all. The HUD design is nothing unique but it works well for what the game is, however there are a few improvements I feel could be made to it. The Shields bar, your health basically, is tucked up in the top right and blends in with the rest of the HUD and sometimes the background, this is kind of an issue as sometimes you miss the fact you've even lost health as you take damage, I think the Shields should have been a different colour to the rest of the HUD or at least been larger so as to be easier to track, perhaps even switching its position with the Energy Bar (the bar on the right that shows when you can fire a locked missile) So that it's more in your face and you know when to get the heck out of dodge, there's also an "Emergency Shield" bar which I think would've been better named as "Shield Recharge" or something as it gradually fills and maxes your shields once done, and it might've been better to pack it a little bit closer to the shields bar so that it's crystal clear that it's directly tied to the shields' percentage. I feel dodging was a little bit too limited (this goes for the On-Rails sections too, but at a lesser extent) as it was tied to the charge amount of the "Hyperdrive Power" bar, this UI element is a nice visual touch to let you know when you can dodge, but in later Missions when things get busy and hectic, I fear the dodge just doesn't feel like it's as useful as it should be, it feels like the frequency should be greater knowing how busy things get, not to say it should allow super fast consecutive dodges, just enough of a frequency where you need to be mindful, but can also get the heck out of dodge easily as merely flying away often isn't quite enough and there is no forward dash to my knowledge which makes escapes tricky, a little too tricky in my opinion. In the rest of the HUD I feel the text could've also used some more contrast, but it's not that big a deal, the text does it's job fine as it is now. Despite how I bash certain aspects of the gameplay, perhaps being a little nitpicky at points, I do honestly love the gameplay, it is very fun when things go the way they should go and you know that any mistakes are your own, there are just tiny things that take matters out of your own hands and leave you feeling just a little bit cheated at certain points. On a lighter note, I personally loved the soundtrack, it included tracks with a nice beat to them that really got you pumped for the action and sound pretty cool. The tracks are nothing amazing or unique, but they don't have to be, they're just snappy enough to give you a nice tune to blow peeps up to and aren't so in your face that they distract from the action. The game's sfx is a bit of a mixed bag, none of the sounds are bad, but some of them do kind of underwhelm and sometimes there's a lack of aural cues for certain things entirely such as crashing into the environment in the On-Rails sections. Enemies blowing up sound like splashes of water for some reason, I don't know if that's just me, but the explosions when enemies die do sound more like splashes than explosions due to lacking any boom. The Voice Acting ain't terrible, but like sfx it's a mixed bag, most of the lines sound decent, especially for an indie game, and the major characters do have well-conveyed personalities, however sometimes the lines of enemy grunts fall flat, and some lines are delivered awkwardly, this isn't too much of an issue to me as I know VAs are expensive and voice direction comes into it too. The script shines most when the two main characters and other major side characters interact with each other, the personalities are well-written and synergise really damn well, the first few lines had me impressed at how characteristic everything sounds. The overall plot is pretty cool, nothing super unique, but still very charming with the story being that an AI grew so knowledgeable that humans feared it and it sent itself into space to start its own colonies under the name of the Union, whereas the humans formed the Alliance and the two oppose each other, you as the main character fight for the Union as a war between the two factions breaks out. I do feel things are a little oddly paced at points, however that could just be the Voice Acting not quite hitting home the way it's supposed to sometimes, I also feel the Alliance are portrayed almost comically evil, but I'll let that slide as it's quite charming in a way. Overall, despite all my little gripes and all the improvements I can think of, this game is pretty good, it's nothing super special, nothing groundbreaking, and has its fair share of flaws, but I think it's definitely worth a buy as it doesn't cost too much and has solid foundations of something pretty amazing, it just has a few jagged edges here and there that can easily be ground away with a little work. In conclusion, if I were to give the game a rating out of 10, I would give it a solid 6.5/10. It's a decent game, plenty of fun, got a charming low-poly visual style, and cheap to boot, I recommend it!

This is a great high octane space shooter with plenty of tongue in cheek references to old school gaming. Feels like I'm playing starfox for the first time all over again. Just in your face fun, stuff going kaboom, lasers and snarky back-and-forth dialogue. Straight up gold.

If you ever did animation on Blender you owe this guys 6 bucks... Cmon, buy it

Starts off rather easy as you learn the ropes. Then it gets CRAZY!!! It a spike, but one you will be ready for.

What is this game? Ikaruga Star fox with shades of ace combat and lots, LOTS of cheese in the dialog and plot. Its fun.

Like Starfox on steroids!

飒爽直快的轨道射击+太空射击，还有装甲核心的neta

Great game, clearly made by a passionate team. Well worth a quick play through, think star fox ships with some more complex aspects and faster reflex tests.

I loved every second of this game. If you like or even love Star Fox games, you definitely should give this game a try. It's only 5 dollars and while the game doesn't take itself super seriously, it really has a lot of charm. There were only a couple clarity issues but once you get the hang of it, it's addicting! If you want something challenging, give this game a go. It's not as easy as Star Fox games, so you'll have to have better reaction times for a lot of things. While the controls are a bit funky at first, you get used to them as you play. Definitely recommend it!