Full Power To Guns: Aerobat Looks V. Swish
Bang bang
"Oooh that does look nice!" I muttered at a gif clip retweeted before my eyes, staring at the 'clouds of Going Really Fast' kicked up by a aircraft skimming above the ground. "What is it?"
The answer is Aerobat [official site], an upcoming 2D side-scrolling shoot 'em up where you can power weapons or engines - but not both at the same time. Here, come watch a trailer to watch the ship zoom upwards then tumble back down spitting zapbeams.
Coo, that's not half bad, is it? Awful pretty. And that trailer's from back in January.
As you'll have seen by now - watch the gif and trailer if you haven't, sheesh (unless mobile data or work firewalls or something forbid that right now, in which case I'm sorry for assuming a universality of experience) - Aerobat will have players ducking and weaving between enemies while the engines charge, then zipping upwards to tumble and rain hell.
"The game is designed with a heavy emphasis on split-second risk vs reward decisions — your greatest victories will be achieved through reckless self-endangerment," says lone developer Matthew 'Thew' Yeager. Aye, I like the sound of that all right. He says the mouse controls have "near zero input latency", which will be hugely important here.
No word on a release date yet, but it's confirmed for Windows and may hit Mac and Linux too.