Strange flying machines, lots of mechanics to learn, challenging. Domestic development.
The game is announced for the Windows platform.
LARGE LYRICAL INTRO
In connection with this game, I remembered two stories from my personal life that are very correlated with this project.
1) When I got my driver’s license, I didn’t have a car. And my parents didn’t have a car. Accordingly, I attended to the maximum all the practical lessons that were taught at the driving school and even raked in a little more extra. Somehow having passed my license and only five years later having bought a car, another two months with an experienced friend covered kilometers almost every day in a variety of conditions – from simple to complex. Only after this I was able to drive more or less safely for myself and others.
2) There are a lot of parallels between this game and military equipment. I am a reserve officer (I did not serve in my specialty), hand on heart, now I can remember the detailed structure of the MT-12 anti-tank gun? At one time, theory (but only!) knew it well, we rode/washed/watched it at the training camp. How about shooting perfectly the first time (even if not now – then)? Rhetorical question, right??
And in this game they give us a fleet, a set of incomprehensible buttons and something like (as they write in laudatory popular reviews) – “Whoever floats out will float out, that’s how it should be.”. Stop making games for weaklings!"Good luck to you guys with this philosophy when recruiting, for example, the same pilots. I can just imagine this picture, recruits who have never studied above grade 9 for a day, on the airfield and the speech of the regiment commander: “Our country, through maximum effort, has produced these 20 newest aircraft in five years and they are the last hope in the war. Whoever swims out will swim out!"Cooking someone? Why?? Need a challenge. There will be a challenge, but I doubt the successful completion of a combat mission.
I can’t say about myself that I mastered the game well, in some moments I didn’t get into it at all (“didn’t live to see” them). Therefore – first glance.
We play as the commander of a small flotilla, concurrently being the grand duke of the ruling house of the empire (very similar to the Russian one in the diesel-punk setting), who arrived to restore order in a province very similar to Afghanistan.
The gameplay is a complex mixture of controlling the ships of your flotilla, resource management, and text role-playing game.
At first they even try to teach us a little. And I can even say that I absorbed the training well, at least what was required – I understood it in theory and even fairly well (but still not well enough) implemented it in practice.
First of all, we will be taught how to fly on a global map. Right-click on the target and if there is enough fuel, we fly.
Upon arrival, the first serious test awaits – landing of ships inside the destination point. In theory, everything is also not very difficult, but practice makes its own adjustments. We’ll talk about physics a little lower, but for now I’ll just report: you need to plant each one separately(!) your aircraft. And if at least one of them does it unsuccessfully, replay. I managed to land normally only on the fourth attempt, which included 13 approaches on 4 ships.
I must admit – with each new attempt it turned out better and better. Mainly due to the fact that I chose the most convenient places. If the landscape of the landing sites turns out to be more difficult somewhere, then replays are very likely. We must also remember that not every ship can be landed on every platform. If the pepelats is big, you can’t put him on a small platform.
The process is, of course, spectacular. Altimeter, jets of flame from landing engines in all directions, good voiceover giving short, clear reports.
Inside the settlement we can be provided https://happyvegascasino.co.uk/ with various services: refueling, repairs, equipping with weapons.
In cities we will also have meetings with their key inhabitants. As a rule, these are influential locals with whom you can discuss the current situation or even recruit some (with ships) into your fleet. The success of communication will depend on correctly spoken lines in dialogues. You need to find your own approach to each interlocutor.
Quite quickly (it seems, already in the second city) enemy ships will begin to attack our fleet. And this is where the most interesting thing happens.
First we need to choose the order in which our ships will enter the battle. In fact, the system is extremely dishonest. Our first (one and then also one at a time) pepelats are thrown at absolutely all enemy units appearing on the battlefield at the same time.
The battle here is a serious carousel in which it’s easy to get lost. Since the battle always takes place in the format of one of our ships against several of the enemies, the prospects for combat clashes are extremely sour. Opponents play clearly, harmoniously, shoot accurately. But we just have to learn this.
I remembered a story told by one football player. The coach asks: "Who is the fastest on the field?". Players look at each other – choose the fastest or several. The coach puts them on the line of the center of the field and says: “When the whistle blows, run forward to the goal and at maximum speed.”. They are OK. Whistle. The players ran. And the coach blows the whistle from the same line and plants the ball in the direction of their running. It becomes obvious to everyone who is the most promising on the field in terms of speed – the ball.
Absolutely the same story in this game. There is a lot of talk about the importance of ship movement. Yes, this is of course important. But the fastest in this “field” are shells. And, as a rule, no matter what feints you try at the relatively snail’s pace (afterburner changes the situation very little) speed of the ship – with a 100% probability they will hit you at least a little. Moreover, almost always our aircraft is under crossfire.
Even under such cruel conditions, my personal record (best approach), exchanged two of my ships for eleven enemy ones. And the remaining two of my pepelats continued to fall without options. I think it’s good.
ABOUT PHYSICS AND REALISM OF PROCESSES
A lot of praise has been said on the technical side. But it turns out interesting. I noticed that praise is common words. And the disadvantages are indicated – in the controls, the overall complexity of the battle, that is, what the core of this game consists of.
I decided to take a closer look at how ships fly when landing and in battle, how battles go. Revealed the following:
1) Controllability during landing often does not depend on how we control.
1.1) Lateral movements occur as randomly as possible. Sometimes the ship barely moves, sometimes it is completely tossed around. When moving sideways, a roll always occurs.
1.2) A slight roll from one engine sometimes has to be corrected long and hard with oncoming traffic. Straightening the tilt is almost an unrealistic task. Even with a perfect landing he will.
1.3) This shocked me to the core. There were situations when all the engines were turned off and for such a long time (a couple of seconds exactly), and the ship was flying upward. And sometimes, even with the landing engines operating at maximum speed, you barely have time to slow down in front of the landing site. Such are they – the fickle winds of "Afghan".
2) Combat physics. I think the damage recording system on our ship is good. Either the engine will be shot out, then the machine gun will jam, or the missile will be neutralized. It would be normal if the same damage system were on enemy ships. Even on their last legs, enemy ships maneuver and shoot perfectly. Our pepelats were not lying around in terms of survivability, several hits on them and they arrived – something fell off. I personally saw the picture. My flagship chops up (many hits) enemy ships, but still dies before winning. My new ship enters the battle, I give a quick burst of fire. Two (one shell each) hits on enemies – two corpses. "Cool", yes? In my opinion, it’s somehow not very good, because while my flagship was dying, I experienced a bunch of problems with control and weapons that accompanied the “realism” of its damage, but the enemies did not experience this.
A LITTLE ABOUT SETTINGS
The graphical settings of the game are made as strange as possible. All effects are tied to one slider(!). In this regard, in order to disable Bloom, which I personally always disable in all games (it harms vision, and the eyes are not good, and the prospect of seeing this flickering soap is not attractive) – you need to disable almost all other effects. I just want to ask – why is it done like this?? For example, with rain I would be interested to see or something else. It would be logical to somehow separate the effects from each other.
Let’s look at the pros and cons of the game and summarize
+ Overall – good graphics. It ranges from admirable to simple.
+ Good music and sound. We were especially pleased with the voiced reports of operators from the field and the sounds of shooting.
+ The ability to rebuild ships and perform them in the most fantastic configurations. I haven’t really looked into it myself (at first glance), but the reviews and descriptions inspire respect.
+ Good Russian localization with voice acting for some moments.
THINGS THAT CAN BE BOTH A PLUS AND A MINUS:
+- Overall Game Difficulty. The impression may be from “why do I need this??"in 10 minutes, before – that’s all I’ve been waiting for in this life. Therefore, plus/minus, opinions will vary greatly.
– Not very good ship control and damage system in battle from the chapter "On physics and realism of processes".
– Unsuccessful solution with a slider and graphic effects tied only to it. It would be possible to use half (or however many there are)?) leave, but now almost everything has to be turned off.
It is extremely difficult to evaluate the game objectively. You can understand both those who really didn’t like it and those who were delighted.
If you, my good friend, somehow carried out these orders, and I had the opportunity to give them to you.
PS: I probably didn’t cover all the aspects, I might have missed something. I will be glad to add/correct the review or answer questions along the way in the comments.
PPPS: Particularly warm is the fact that this wonderful game of domestic production was made by almost one person. We really need this kind of gamedev.