Jet Lancer‘s coming in later than deliberate, however who can keep mad when your flight seems to be like this? Sitting on the crossroads between Luftrausers, Daemon X Machina and Top Gun, Vladimir Fedyushkin and Nicolai Danielsen’s slick dogfighting anime about turning mountain-sized mecha into scrapheaps with fighter jets hit the skies earlier this week on Steam and Itch.io.
Originally set for a release last summer, Jet Lancer is Luftrausers delivered with a glance that’s much more vibrant and rather less, nicely, fash.
That comparability to Luftrausers is a welcome one, thoughts. Vlambeer’s sepia-tinted dogfights had a beautiful heft and momentum to them, a flourish that Jet Lancer seems to seize splendidly. Like Luftrausers, you’ve obtained a “jet” button and a “shoot” button from which to navigate a bullet-filled sky. But Jet Lancer expands your choices with super-weapons, homing missiles, afterburners and barrel rolls for momentary invulnerability.
If Luftrausers was pure minimalism, Jet Lancer is delightfully extreme – an explosion of colors and jet trails, screen-filling bosses, and the sort of diegetic UI alarms that set my coronary heart aflutter.
Rather than framing itself as an arcade score-attack, Jet Lancer has a full marketing campaign of aerial antics to shoot by. Jobs are picked from a 3D overworld, driving your hover-carrier from mission to mission throughout a vibrant archipelago rendered in sharp Wind Waker stylings. It’s a post-apocalyptic mecha anime in planes, following mercenary pilot and flight college drop-out Ash Leguinn as she weaves her airplane by an internet of intrigue, pirates, speaking cats and rival pilots.
As a welcome apart, Jet Lancer additionally comes with some beautiful accessibility choices – with anti-fatigue toggles, adjustable dodge home windows, and letting you disable screenshake and freeze-frame results.
Jet Lancer is out now on Steam and Itch.io for £11.39/€12.49/$14.99
