This is Niche Spotlight. In this column, we regularly introduce new games to our fans, so please leave feedback and let us know if there’s a game you want us to cover!
Today’s Spotlight is Hyperspace Dogfights, a 2D aerial combat roguelite by Sleeper Games.
Fight your way through waves of land, sea, and air enemies with an advanced fighter jet that gains an increasingly bizarre arsenal as you play. Purchase passive items and weapons between waves that consist of everything from conventional missiles and machine guns, to laser swords and rail guns. You can watch a trailer for the game above.
Hyperspace Dogfights is available on Windows PC and Linux via Steam for $9.99.
Here’s a rundown of the game:
Hyperspace Dogfights is a juicy jet-combat roguelike in which you blast, dodge and slice your way through masses of technologically inferior enemies. Your jet-craft evolves differently on each mission and becomes stronger and weirder by gathering some of the 250+ items available ingame.
You fly a jet in a 2d environment and blow things up. You’ll be given randomized goals in order to complete enemy waves. In-between waves you’ll spend currency on items that modify your jet in various ways. Zones end with random boss encounters. Difficulty is pretty harsh, you’ll probably die a lot. But each next run will play out a little different. Throughout the game you’ll unlock additional items to find on later runs. The game is fairly light on story, but you might piece together things through item descriptions and combat chatter.
Key Features:
- Juicy, impact-full and tense 2d air combat, framed in a weird sci-fi universe
- Colorful pixel art, powered by the Pico8 16 color palette
- More than a hundred different passive items, some providing simple bonuses, some completely changing how your jet behaves
- More then 50 sci-fi jet weapons, including lasers, explosives and aerial melee options
- 40+ active items used for offense, defense or utility
- Strong focus on synergies and weird jet builds. Most items will interact with others, all passives can stack with themselves.
- 7 zones with distinct enemy composition to explore
- 10 bosses to die against
- 5+ player jets to fly, all coming with unlockable mk2 loadouts
- Various wave goals: Hunt ace pilots, raid ground targets, perform recon scans and more
- An adaptive soundtrack with combat and menu tracks, consisting of 14 tuns by ENUIT and Ole Toensen (available as dlc)
- Persistent unlocks with lots of items in the loot pool from the get go, but some things only unlockable through the endgame
- Optional endless mode (unlocked after second victory)
- Steam cloud save, cross platform
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