I've been a fan of dogfighting games since playing Elite with my dad on his old Acorn computer. He'd do the flying and I'd fire the weapons. Maybe that division of labour is to blame for my biggest weakness as a pilot: knowing when to pull out of a strafe. Once I've my gunsights on an enemy I'll continue flying at them with my guns firing until either they explode or I do. In roguelite dogfighter Wind Runners, that cavalier approach is proving my downfall over and over.
The Wind Runners demo popped up on Steam over the weekend and I've been trying to complete a single run of its bullet hell dogfighting since then.
Despite its setup – that you're a fighter pilot fighting back against a sprawling sci-fi navy of technotheists who have seized control of all the planets in the solar system – Wind Runners looks and plays like a Saturday morning cartoon. Your ship is a beautiful thing of sharp angular lines and the enemies you're going up against pilot blocky tanks and battleships. Every mission I've played in the demo takes place on a brightly lit world, with snow-capped mountains in the background, sleek utopian architecture in the middleground, and a body of water at the bottom of the screen. That last detail is crucial because when you fly low your thrusters kick up great sprays of water – I will never not enjoy this in a game.
Battles take place in a side-on view and you control your ship's angle with the left stick, boost and brake with the A and B buttons, and fire your cannons with the right trigger. Land enough hits on your enemies and you'll charge up special weapons that you fire with the left and right bumpers. A flock of homing missiles in one case or a single powerful rocket in the other. A tap of the Y button sends your fighter into a brief bullet-dodging spin, but it's only a brief reprieve and so one to be used judiciously.
If you've played Vlambeer's Luftrausers, you'll be familiar with the set up. That too was a game where you had to thread your little fighter about a screen mottled with flak, bullets, and laser beams. However, unlike Luftrausers, which was a single stage game where you were challenged to simply survive as long as you could, with the enemies you faced steadily growing in strength and number, Wind Runners bolts its bullet hell action into a roguelite structure. Each run is built around a raid on a Realm-owned planet.
Set over three parts, a raid's stage might have you shooting down enemy fighters, another might task you with destroying an AA gun emplacement, or destroying an elite battle cruiser. After you complete three stages, you then face the admiral of that world. The hitch, as far as muggins here is concerned, is that your health is persistent through the stages and you only earn the rewards for completing each stage if you make it through the raid in one piece. I've made it to the boss five times now and every time my health bar has been cut to shribbons in the first three stages. The problem, you see, is that I can't resist the urge to stay in a strafing dive, even when it's long past the point of sensibility.
As you only charge up your special weapons with shots on target, Wind Runners rewards you for staying engaged in the fight. You could argue (unsuccessfully, considering my high failure rate) that playing chicken with the enemies' flak cannons is necessary. Your primary guns are powerful, but the homing missiles and rockets can be devastating. The longer those go uncharged, the less damage you're able to rain down on your enemies.
However, while enemy fighters swarm about you firing easily dodgeable single shots, Wind Runners' larger enemies are armed with gun turrets that fire out long streams of munitions. Get caught in their crosshairs and your health is shredded. And, with your primary gun firing out of your nose cone, you have to fly directly at the enemy in the exact firing angle they'll be using to target you. You get an onscreen indicator and that would be just the right moment to pull out of an attack run. Not that I pay any attention to that…
Yet, despite my many failures, I keep booting up new raids. There is a joy to weaving between gun fire, slamming the airbrake to make a sharp turn and fire off a missile into an enemy battleship. I love that the larger enemies are made up of separate hardpoints, so as the battle goes on, if you focus on particular weapon systems, you can thin down the enemies' firepower. There is a lightness to the world and the combat that's so moreish. And, presumably, if I ever complete a raid, I'll be able to trick out my ship to be more powerful on the next run.
I'm just not confident I'll ever learn my lesson.