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Luftrausers delayed as Vlambeer works out Vita/PS3 deal
Vlambeer's Luftrausers, the PC and Mac version of free Flash dogfighting game Luftrauser, may come to the Vita and PS3, if Vlambeer and Sony can work out a deal they both like. Vlambeer's previous hit, Super Crate Box, made a splash on the Vita last year.Unfortunately the bureaucratic process and subsequent extra development time means Luftrausers won't be out before April. Ridiculous Fishing, Vlambeer's other in-development title, should be out for iOS slightly before Luftrausers."Basically, what we're trying to say is that we think Ridiculous Fishing is going to move in front of Luftrausers in terms of release, but both of them should be out before three more months," Vlambeer co-founder Rami Ismail writes. Both games will be playable at PAX East, from March 22 - 24 in Boston.
Luftrausers lives up to its arcade potential
Hotline Miami was the official pick for the "Most Fantastic" game at Fantastic Arcade last weekend, but the cabinet I returned to whenever I had a spare moment was Vlambeer's Luftrausers, the expanded PC/Mac game based on the Flash dogfighting game.It's perfect as an arcade game, especially with the modifications Vlambeer put in place for the demo, as it gives you very simple mechanics to achieve an immediately apparent goal, and then leaves you to practice those mechanics for as long as you can survive. It's too bad an arcade cabinet won't be one of the default venues for the full game.%Gallery-163549%
Luftrausers probably doesn't cost $5,000 (it might!), but it's definitely launching on PC/Mac this year
Vlambeer, the folks behind hyperaddictive rage inducer Super Crate Box, have another game on the way, Luftrausers, and it's coming out pretty soon. "Luftrausers is set to release on PC and Mac in late 2012," says newly announced publisher Devolver Digital. Devolver previously worked with Vlambeer on the Serious Sam 3 spinoff game, "The Random Encounter.""But what's a Luftrauser?" you ask? Well, it's a fictional warplane created by the Vlambeer dudes, and it comes in a bunch of different varieties ("125 deadly combinations," says the PR). In practice, this means you spawn with a trio of settings for your plane and you've gotta survive as long as possible (while destroying enemy ships, planes, etc.). Mastering each combination and learning your favorite should help add plenty of depth to the basic spawn/shoot/die/respawn loop.In a few rounds I played during GDC Europe, it was quick to pick up and hard to put down. The concept of playing it with an actual gamepad makes Luftrausers' core gameplay all the more thrilling – I was playing on a laptop keyboard with WASD, which worked surprisingly well, but I'd prefer a pad. Moreover, the soundtrack is delightfully retro-sounding with modern influence – think 16-bit era midi with dubstep influence.Luftrausers arrives later this year on both PC and Mac, "with a price point set at $5,000." Of course, the phrase "release date and price subject to change" is attached to that hilariously high price, so don't go expecting to pay that much when the game launches.
The different deadly combinations of Luftrausers: parts explained in part
Luftrausers, Vlambeer's sequel to the singular Luftrauser, is all about ambiance -- and creating your very own form of airborne, rhythmic death with extensive plane customization options. Mostly it's about that second part.There are three customizable parts for each rauser: weapons, bodies and engines. On the development side, Vlambeer is trying out some of these lethal combinations, and shares its experience with three parts on its dev blog. The cannon is "insanely hard to use at the start," Vlambeer concedes, but if you do manage to hit something it explodes into shrapnel that blows up whatever it hits; it's particularly effective on boats.The melee body part offers "something like" negative 80 percent health, but you don't take damage from colliding with enemies. This is doubly helpful as it's possible to melee boats in Luftrausers. The "gungine" is a machine gun mounted on a standard jet-propulsion engine, and that's all the description we need.Each combination of parts will have its own name, and there will be at least five different parts for each section, meaning a minimum of 125 different combinations. For example, the aquatic propulsion engine and heavy armor body on a standard rauser may be called the "Blastoise," Vlambeer suggests. The soundtrack will change with each altered spec as well, meaning "Different weapon? Different bassline. Something like that. Hell yeah. Kozilek is gonna be busy."
Luftrausers announced by Super Crate Box dev Vlambeer
At the end of an introspective post by indie developer Vlambeer's Rami Ismail, he announced the company is working on a game called Luftrausers and posted the image seen above. That's it. Well, that's it for that post.A little bit of digging brings us back to another post by Rami last June, about a game called Luftrauser (no plural), that Vlambeer notes sponsors deemed "too extreme." The Flash-based arcade flight shooter is free and actually worth test flying."Luftrausers is basically Luftrauser redone from scratch, with everything ten times as spectacular," Ismail told Joystiq when we contacted him. "The biggest difference is that you'll be able to build your own Rauser.""We've got the full Super Crate Box art-team in the shape of Paul 'Pietepiet' Veer and Roy Nathan de Groot working on it. KOZILEK will be back to redeem his spot for the amazing soundtrack."Ismail tells us the team will have more info on the project next week as they finalize details.
