Hyperspace Dogfights is a juicy jet-combat roguelike in which you blast, dodge and slice your way through masses of technologically inferior enemies. During the mission your craft will evolve into something stronger and weirder by gathering some of the 200+ items available ingame.
Very Positive
2 Steam reviews
| LANGUAGE | AUDIO | SUBTITLES | INTERFACE |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | — | Y | Y |
Really, seriously fun. Got it for a song. I was sold by the tagline of "Luftrausers but as a Rouge-like campaign", and while that is an accurate description it's worth noting that this game executes that about as well as I imagine it could be. Considering this just kind of randomly caught my eye it is criminally underrated and deserves another recommend.
[b]TL;DR:[/b] This game is amazing, and one of the best games I have ever played on keyboard. It's responsive, difficult and engaging, performs great, and it's one of the best purchases in my library.
Hyperspace Dogfights feels like a pinnacle of its genre. I bought it because I was a huge fan of the Hyperspace Anthology, and deeply respect the developer, Stefan Widany (creator of not only many good game jam games, but also the first big mod for FTL: Faster Than Light, called "Captain's Edition"). I made the call to buy the Crew Edition from the start, and it was a good idea to do so. It takes the best lessons from all the games released at the time, and combines them with hilarious writing and flashy effects to keep you coming back every time.
[h2]Non-spoiler praise[/h2]
Hdogs brings something to the table that you don't see much outside of games like Titanfall: Complete skill expression. The movement system is built in such a way that you can always push your jet just a little further, jump a little bit later, strafe in a different direction while shooting, put one more bullet into the enemy. Your reaction speed and finger precision are the limit.
Said movement is controlled by one of the finest control schemes I've had the pleasure to work with. This game has actively made me worse at other games like Hollow Knight simply from how simple and responsive it is. You need to contend with 3 verbs and six movement directions. It might take you an hour or two to get acquainted with rotation and strafing, and another couple to properly manage your resources, but as soon as you do, you'll never want to stop.
On performance, like later games, this one slows down how it processes things if your system is taxed. You'll find almost no stutters, and if there are any, you'll be actionable on the very next frame, with no timeloss. This game does benefit from bigger screens, but you can enter into the config file to reduce the zoom level if your screen is too small. [b]Do note that there's a small memory leak, and after 3 or 4 hours the game might crash[/b]. Just quit to desktop and reopen the game every few runs and you should be fine.
This game looks like a bullet hell but plays very differently from games like Touhou or Deltarune. Reaction speed and relative direction matter more than position in the board or minute shifts into nooks into the bullet pattern. Your jet is a futuristic supercombatant but a few well-placed missiles can still make your spleen explode. The game runs on a "Static health, regenetrating shields" system that doesn't require you to look at the UI. Your shields regenerate when you don't shoot, and some attacks can bypass them, but you can use the other parts of your kit to shore up any weaknesses.
Before I talk about the main gimmicks of the game, I want to take a second to mention how Hdogs handles the farming issue that has necessitated solutions since the days of Rogue. Stefan chose Escalation. As time passes and you clear levels escalation increases. It's basically space inflation. Everything gets more expensive, but more enemies spawn, and their modules improve, giving you chances to loot more money. It discourages saving up because that SRM is going to be worth much less later. Additionally, some enemies gain new patterns and bosses get more aggressive. This makes it risky to just hang around regenerating your shield every time you get hit, and encourages you to be on the attack, always.
This plays into your main defensive option: The Jump. Jumping is on-demand invincibility, but it has a few caveats. First, it's long. While you are off in hyperspace, you can't attack. If you can't attack, escalation increases, more enemies spawn, etc. Second, you can't change direction. There's no air to push against, so you just slide in the direction you were going. This matters because of N°3: It can't be cancelled. More than once you'll dodge a stray stream of bullets and jump right into a mountain or laser beam. This can all be solved from practice, and as you improve, you'll find how skillful movement saves your hide more than once.
Another great idea is aerial melee. There are weapons that make melee attacks, letting you joust with drones, deflect bullets, and tell enemy AWACs that they are already dead. It's integraded seamlessly and it's one of the more fun things to do in the early game.
One thing to note is that there's no in-run save system. Runs take about 50 minutes to complete at full FPS, but if you need to interrupt your run, you may need to leave the game paused, which leaves you open to the aforementioned memory leak. It didn't happen much to me, but if you don't have much time to play, keep it in mind.
The upgrade system is Isaac+. You get a random item per level, which costs based on how rare it is, and you can save shops to get identified gear at a markup. The upgrades are wildly varied, and most of them are hilarious and very fun, each lovingly labelled by your loyal Narrator HI, giving you insight into one of the few utopias that are still being written about to this day [spoiler]You are playing as Space UN, if it was The Culture and the Peacekeepers were a competitive gaming league [/spoiler]. You will need to be judicious with what you pick, as there are a few IPECACs running about.
This integrates with the Coolness system. Like in bullet hells, the less you get hit, the better. Reward rarity increases, you get more hearts, more item picks, free money, and more. It can be hard to carry a flawless streak to the end, but if you do, you'll be extremely powerful.
Lastly, the enemy variety is nothing to write home about, but they are all flexible enough to be a unique challenge on their own right, vulnerable to different things, and a different challenge to each jet. They also come in Isaac-like champion variants that add new attacks and special stats to them, to keep you guessing. You'll go from fighting modern fighting jets to discount mecha, and you'll stay in your toes the whole way through.
On music, it's serviceable and unintrusive. The boss tracks are the highlight, with cycling patterns and staccatto synths as the main characteristics most of the time. The art is simple and readable, and has options to reduce the more nausea-inducing effects, although I never needed them.
[h2] Spoiler notes, feel free to skip [/h2]
[spoiler] The bosses are all generally fun to defeat. Some, like the carrier, can feel simple, but they do reward good positioning and speed. Some bosses like the Space Tether can feel hopeless, but with proper upgrade selection and tactics, you can no-sell their hardest attacks.
The final boss is the most bullet-hell-like part of the game, and it's so well made that after beating it a couple of times, I managed to go back to Deltarune and beat [/spoiler] [spoiler] The CH3 secret boss without anyone dying with only deluxe dinners [/spoiler] [spoiler] in one attempt, despite not having played for months.
Should the game feel too easy, you can unlock additional variants of your jets, including challenge variants that will feel familiar to Isaac players, and later challenge modifiers that modify how the game works, like a modifier that makes all the enemies more fragile, but you as well. [/spoiler]
[h2] End of spoilers [/h2]
The game can be replayed for hundreds of hours, and many players have beaten everything about it and keep coming back years after it's release. It's extremely fun, and the item descriptions keep making me reevaluate everything that came later in the franchise. It takes a rare breed to make such a masterpiece as one's first full game.
If you liked the Anthology, I recommend you play this. And if you liked any part of this (except maybe the gameplay), I recommend you try the Anthology as well. Each one has a different genre, and they are all some of the best and cheapest games on the market.
Go help some people and I'll respond to any questions in the comments.
