Luftrausers Review: A Ton of Fun, While It Lasts

At first glance, developer Vlambeer’s latest project “Luftrausers” doesn’t look like much. It borrows its visuals from the days of Atari and tucks away any real sense of purpose; at its core, it’s a mere arcade shooter. With that said, its fluid gameplay mechanic serves as a constant reminder that this game is from the current decade and offers an addictive, simplistic experience while maintaining the everlasting linger of nostalgia.

“Luftrausers” will surprise you. For such a small game it’s actually quite, well, big. While it only offers a single arena and handful of enemies, the featured challenge and upgrade systems call for a lengthy endeavor, if you wish to drastically further your high score, that is.

As you level up and complete challenges, you unlock new parts for your ship that are separated into three categories: weapon, body and engine. Aside from the gameplay, which we’ll get to in a bit, composing your own Rauser using the rather large assortment of parts is arguably the greatest aspect of the game. However, it’s not so much strategy than it is preference when contemplating your next aircraft. In essence, there are three candidates for your next dispatch, which are slow and powerful, fast and weak or a balance of both.

Still, for a game with a sole purpose of delivering fun gameplay, preference over strategy is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, for some, their preference is their strategy, since it’s likely you’ll get the most practice with your favorite combination and achieve the highscore that way. Each, for lack of better term, class has its own limitations, which is why there’s really no concrete superior combination.

This brings to mind another recent arcade shooter, “Resogun.” There are three ships to choose from in “Resogun,” one slow and powerful, one quick and weak and one balanced. No matter how great you think you are with one ship, there’s always a chance another player is just as good with a different one. Though in “Resogun,” you are unable to tinker with the ships, something we must applaud “Luftrausers” for allowing.

If you forget about the strength and durability of the ship, you’ll uncover a layer which appears to be what Vlambeer essentially wished to accomplish. With high scores and challenges now a whisper in the back of your mind, you’ve brought to light an entirely new experience, one where gameplay is king.

“Luftrausers” offers a very simple flying mechanic: you turn your ship left and right using the archetype buttons (or analog) for your specific gaming platform, press up to start the engine and an appointed input to fire your weapon. Where the addiction kicks in is the moment you realize just how fluid and precise the controls are. At that point all sense of the old-school arcade is lost — aside from visuals — and you’re effortlessly bouncing around the skies…

…and we mean bouncing. The flight in “Luftrausers” does not care much for lifelike physics. Your ship flips and bounces along the arena in an almost acrobatic fashion, which makes soaring passed incoming trajectories fired by waves of enemies a ton of fun. If you just so happen to fly straight into the water you’ll jump out in an instant, as if you hit a trampoline beneath the surface, and continue on your aviation — though this does take a bit of damage.

Speaking of damage, if you’re on the brink of death you can replenish your health by releasing the shoot button. However, if you’re aiming for the high score you’ll have a small timeframe before losing your multiplier displayed in the upper right-hand corner of the screen; this also attempts to flavor in a bit of strategy, though when the alternatives are death or loss of points, most would presumably choose the latter.

“Luftrausers” is a great addition to the arcade shooter genre, it’s an experience one might not expect to be as fun as it proves, though the appeal has its expiration. Even an addiction can be beat and without so much as a second arena to support the game’s focus on variety, it won’t be long before the fire that fuels the hype burns out and “Luftrausers” ultimately converts to ash.