It’s been long enough since I last played an Ace Combat game that I can remember only two things about Ace Combat. 1) This Ace Combat 7 cutscene featuring what appears to be a wavy JPEG of a dog, which the Twitterati all thought was an exasperated animator’s joke, but which I understand is actually a homage to a real staff member’s dog who died before the game’s release. And 2) you can ‘powerslide’ by wilfully initiating a stall, which I think might actually be a move from Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.
Delivery Must Complete sort of builds a whole subgenre around the thrill of powersliding planes. How does it do this? The clue is that “DMC” is also an abbreviation of “Devil May Cry”. Here’s a trailer. I promise you there will be no further confusing/upsetting references to dogs.
Watch on YouTube
The Steam page calls it “a high speed Acelike Roguelike with SSSTYLE”, featuring cell-shaded, upgradeable jet fighters, four procedural locations, and an enemy roster that includes blimps, dragons and mechs. The story blurb suggests that your overall goal is to make a delivery. What’s the return postage cost for an exploded Sidewinder these days?
In Delivery Must Complete, you will: parry missiles, fire bouncy projectiles out of railguns, deal with varying cloud cover, boggle at fantastical terrain flourishes such as floating islands, build a style meter, and call in orbital strikes. You will not: have limited ammo, though you do have to worry about overheating.
It’s the work of Melbourne, Australia-based developer and gamejam enthusiast Yoyoyollie. There’s no release date yet. Thanks to ae2501maeth for noticing. I’ve been in the mood for a firmly non-simulatory flight sim for a while and this looks like just the thing, though I do have to flag up its mystifying shortage of brewing mechanics.
