Hello, this is The Gemsbok, and today's topic is Luftrausers, a game developed by
Vlambeer and originally released in 2014.
Luftrausers, much like every notable game from Vlambeer, is a mechanically
rewarding and somewhat unique take on a familiar type of game. It's a game in the
arcade style, which basically means that it has a heavy emphasis on scoring, a
high level of difficulty, a simplicity in both premise and visuals, more complexity
to the mechanics than the story, and a difficulty level that scales up the
further you get—to ensure a challenging experience for its score-chasing players.
In the case of Vlambeer's other prominent games that follow that mold (Nuclear
Throne and Super Crate Box), I have practically nothing but praise to give.
In the case of Luftrausers, however, I have a more mixed-yet-positive opinion
of the game after the many hours I have spent with it, and would like to use a
classic pros and cons list to cordon off the good from the bad.
Luftrausers is a game that offers a great challenge that looks and sounds
great too, and is a stellar title—with only a couple notable exceptions. Let's start
with the good. In a previous video in this series, I covered Vlambeer's early
little award-nominated hit, Super Crate Box, another arcade-style game that takes
a simple twist on a classic gameplay formula and designs a brilliant game
around that. In the case of Luftrausers, there are two such twists: ship health
that regenerates when you are not firing or being hit, and enemy spawns that
depend on existing enemy saturation. These two twists are not as new as the
simple twist behind Super Crate Box, but they are equally well-implemented. The
nature of the regeneration mechanic is one of the best choices that was made in
the design of Luftrausers. You can not merely tank damage and keep shooting at
an enemy, despite the fact that you can regenerate health and they can't. You
have to master the momentum-based turning and stalling of your plane,
because there will be times that you have to focus on dodging and can not
return fire. This health system lowers the base difficulty somewhat from the
flat one-hit-KO mechanic of Super Crate Box, but also raises the skill ceiling by
contributing a further layer of decision-making complexity into the
moment-to-moment gameplay. Furthermore, the health regenerating only when not
firing a weapon gives an anxious edge to falling low on health, as opposed to a
sort of fatalist resign. You almost always feel like you can
survive and keep the round going—if you just dodge that next volley! The music
even swells slightly when at very low health to bolster the intensity of the
moment. In these ways, you are compelled to manage the enemies on screen so as to
not become swamped in bullets. And, all that aside, it also gives some balance to
the otherwise incredible cannon weapon, which precludes regenerating for the
whole duration of its lengthy firing process. The enemy spawning in
Luftrausers being based on enemy saturation, meanwhile, is certainly
nothing new, but does give a frantic—even somewhat stressful—tone to the gameplay,
as it never lets up even momentarily. Compare this to a hypothetical design
that is similar in many respects, but which has set waves of enemies instead.
Waves instill less tension and demand less persistent fortitude from the
player, although they do offer other benefits, such as a more comfortable ebb
and flow of intensity and more granular control over difficulty and encounter
variety. After all, Luftrausers' enemy spawning mechanic may be a bit of a
double-edged sword, as I suspect it's partial responsibility for some of the
enemies spawning issues I'll detail later in this video. There are a
surprising number of ship combinations available in Luftrausers. The 15 ship
parts can be fit together in roughly 125 possible ships in the game, and that's
not including one of the best final playable secrets I've ever seen—which I
highly recommend not spoiling for yourself unless you're positive that
you'll never complete all of the game's missions. The game's 125-dish buffet of
mechanical customization is atypical in the arcade genre; except for fighting
games, arcade titles typically include either a singular static player-
character or a choice of four or fewer character options. A laudable touch that
Vlambeer made along these lines was thinking of a unique name for every
possible combination of ship parts, which gives some personality and flair to the
player's consideration of their favorite component combinations, and also provides
occasion for an unexpected laugh every once in a while (there are more than a
few amusing gems among the large pool of names). It is truly impressive how fresh it
feels to switch periodically from, for instance, a sluggish aquatic monster to a
fragile agile bird. It is my personal opinion that, had
the game simply featured five or so stock ship options instead, its replay
value would have been immensely diminished—as the modularity of the
planes has a psychological benefit, whereby one can attribute a bad round or
a series of failed mission attempts to a chosen combination, spurring the player
to switch things up and try again. The freshness inherent to such a swap
can likely also be credited to the sound design, but that will be covered in the
section immediately following this. The designs of Luftrausers' enemies and
projectiles are also to be commended, as the distinct shapes and behaviors of the
enemies make their attacks instantly understandable despite the cluttered
screen. These subtle mechanical touches make snap judgments more reliable, and
help justify the sharply limited number of enemies (which will be discussed more
in the 'cons' section in a little while). The one place where Luftrausers
unambiguously bests both Super Crate Box and Nuclear Throne is in aesthetics,
through its dynamic soundtrack and its restricted-palette visual design. Let me
start with the soundtrack, and address any viewers that rolled their eyes at
the word 'dynamic' in the previous sentence. I promise you that I mean it
quite literally, and not as some kind of flashy buzzword. The soundtrack actually
changes depending on your ship part selections, each of which has its own
associated sound elements. So, those 125 possible player planes I
mentioned above also have an accompanying 125 variances to the
in-game audio—in effect, 125 similar- but-unique tracks. This brilliant choice
takes advantage of the systems already in place in the game to add a further
differentiation between different rounds, especially when selecting the random
ship parts. In addition, this choice contributes to the feel of each part, as
one comes to recognize the beat of a beloved component. On top of this, the
visuals of Luftrausers are wonderful! The stock color scheme's balance of rust red
and cream conveys a dim sunset, an ancient computer screen, and a harried
battlefield all at once, while the simplicity of its design makes it
legible even when there are projectile streams on the screen from numerous
different angles. How Vlambeer got this minimalist visual
style so right comes now too many small touches, such as the clear difference
between player projectiles and enemy projectiles; the wake effects of the
plane's jet on the surface of the water; the way projectiles include
multiple colors so they can be seen against any part of the background; the
way all elements which have AI and don't travel in a straight line share the same
color, just a shade off of the color of the player's plane; and the acrobatic way
the planes twist through the air as they turn. The gaming landscape is full twice
over with games developed by people that just picked the most obvious visual
style, usually some approximation of realism or else an uninspired use of a
more interesting style like pixel art. So a game with a stylized aesthetic that
looks this nice is doubly welcome. Add to this that the game offers loads of
different unlockable color schemes for people not as fond of the base choices
as I am, or who just want to switch it up after a while, and the aesthetic details
here are deserving of even greater praise. Now, onward to the more
unfortunate sections of this video. This is my biggest problem with Luftrausers,
but it is an issue that will only be encountered by individuals who either
play the game enough to achieve or nearly achieve 100% completion, or who
truly intend to maximize their scores for leaderboard contention. To put that
another way, even noticing that this is an issue is more than likely a ten-hour
task for those who are new to the game at the beginning of their playthrough.
Now, I like some probabilistic programming and randomness in my games.
Sometimes, if it's implemented very well— like in Spelunky or Isaac or Slay the
Spire—I like a lot of it. But the ideal form of randomness does not harm the
established rhythm of gameplay, nor do key game events (like being able
to attempt to boss encounters) rely on random chance or a system that makes
them inconsistent. Let's talk about key game events first, then the rhythm of
gameplay. In Luftrausers, insofar as this game can be said to have boss encounters,
those encounters (blimps) are extremely inconsistent. In theory, it seems
well-designed: a huge and intimidating enemy descends from above after certain
criteria are met. In practice, though, those criteria do not guarantee the
encounter; they only make the encounter possible, and it becomes frustratingly
rare. The specific criterion is to have destroyed enough enemy crafts to rack up
the difficulty score in the background to open up the widest set of possible
enemie spawns. Sometimes, very rarely, the encounter will spawn after barely having
destroyed enough targets, with maybe only a single aircraft carrier
sunk. But at other times, one can spend minutes dancing around the air,
sinking carrier after carrier and downing ace after ace, and never once see
a blimp. And the latter is much more common than the former. This problem is
exacerbated by the various missions that require multiple blimp kills. When a boss
enemy spawns, the player should feel nervous and excited,
or possibly stalwart and prepared, but they should not feel relieved or bored.
Compare this to the rhythm of Isaac, where (just like in Luftrausers)
moment-to-moment, the challenges ebb and flow and the advantages wane and wax,
all in a more-or-less random way. But the level bosses ground the structure of
Isaac into roughly comfortable units of play. I am not saying that Luftrausers
ought to have levels or waves; I understand that the constant pressure
and continuous challenge of Luftrausers is one of its key design elements. I am
just saying that it should be the case that there is a mechanic for increasing
or seeking blimp spawns, above and beyond getting to the point in a given round
where the player becomes eligible for them—something the player can tangibly
do in order to consistently increase the spawn chances of blimps, or, for that
matter, submarines. That this and some of the games harder challenges are an issue
for most players is easily confirmed by taking a look at the game's steam
achievement statistics. There is a reasonably smooth curve of
player progression across most of the challenges in the game, then a sharp
fall-off of over 20% of players between having nearly all the missions done and
having all of the missions done. Now, as for the basic rhythm of gameplay, it's
time to talk about how this same enemy spawning system negatively impacts score
chasers. The highest aim and love of someone seeking a high score in
Luftrausers is a maximum combo multiplier. Maintaining a high or max
combo is by far the most efficient and effective method of increasing score,
especially when taking down larger targets like carriers and blimps. In
order to keep up a combo while doing that, it is often necessary to keep alive
and slowly deplete either a swarm of small fighters or a swarm of missiles.
This makes a precise and long-range weapon like the laser very strong for
score runs, as it can be used to accurately down just one or two fighters
at a time and can destroy smaller enemies that are off-screen to continue
a combo. But the random nature of the enemy spawning means that normal
fighters and missile-spawning foes are not guaranteed throughout a round. Two
players of identical skill playing with identical planes for an identical length
of time may diverge in score widely simply because random chance fed a
steady flow of fighters to one of them, and there were gaps in that flow for the
other. And the nature of the background difficulty progression system within
each round means that each player is guaranteed to have fewer of those
all-important smaller enemies as a percentage of total enemies as time goes on.
Therefore, if a player hasn't achieved some massive-point-banking combo kills
in the first five minutes or so of a run, their hopes of a high score are
significantly diminished. So, yes, even the smallest and most basic enemies in the
game can be key enemies, depending on one's immediate goals. Thus, the inability
of the player to reliably predict or else reliably manipulate what will spawn
leads to a situation where luck plays a much larger role than in numerous
similar arcade titles, potentially to the frustration of its players. This is a
minor complaint, but one that unfortunately does come into play well
before 100% completion; Luftrausers two modes, hard and brutally hard, do not add
enough texture to make the enemy variety outlast the missions. Don't get me wrong:
there is fairly good enemy variety for a game of this pared-down, combo-scoring,
arcade nature. But the eventually redundant missions of the game and its
remarkably varied ship build options come together to make the suite of
enemies you face seem very minimal. One could argue that the list of enemies
already includes just about everything a mid-twentieth-century combatant
would have at their disposal, but it's apparent from the laser aces, the laser
weapons, and the aquatic jet engine (among other things) that the design of the game
was not limited by historical accuracy. Some possible additions, then, would have
included a form of carrier that spawns smaller aircraft; a bomber that drops
vertically falling projectiles from above; a tethering aircraft or watercraft
that attempts to slow the player through a fired towline; a speedboat that lines
the water's surface with projectiles, as the jet enemy does in the air; and a
variant of the blimp with slowly rotating laser weaponry. For all of that
amazing gameplay variety I so praised with regard to Luftrausers' player-
controlled planes earlier in this video, when the challenges you face are a small
set that do not change, the rounds tend to blur together over time. And the time spent
within any given round, while never dull, does tend to get repetitive. It would be
wonderful if this game's challenges had variety as deep and interesting as that
of its player ships. If you are a player who likes innovative challenging
gameplay and new arcade-style designs, but are unlikely to play any given
arcade title for more than about five hours in total, then Luftrausers is
perfect for you; its flaws will never be apparent to you, and all of its strengths
will be fully on offer. But even if you are a more hardcore player who seeks to
master this rather difficult beast, I would still say that the experience is,
on balance, positive enough for me to recommend it.
Three big pros in its favor, two potentially-less-big cons working
against it. Luftrausers is a game with a high level
of polish, fun mechanics, and a challenge that yields moments of satisfying
triumph after repeated defeats. Simply bear in mind that—barring some very
unlikely future tweaks to the game on the part of Vlambeer—some of Luftrausers'
inevitable frustrations will not be limited to being caused by its difficulty.