Luftrausers Download PC

Luftrausers is a shoot 'em up video game developed by Netherlands-based indie developer studio Vlambeer and published by Devolver Digital for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. It was released on March 18, 2014 and ported to Android by General Arcade on December 20, 2014. A demake of the game, titled LuftrauserZ, was developed by Paul Koller for Commodore 64, Commodore 128 and Commodore 64 Games System, and released by RGCD and Vlambeer on 8 December 2017.

Gameplay

Luftrausers is an airplane-based shoot 'em up. Unlike traditional shoot 'em ups, where the direction of the player craft is fixed, Luftrausers allows 360 degrees of motion, more akin to a multidirectional shooter. However, the player's main weapon can only fire from the front, forcing the player to take into account the position and angle of the airplane. Players must take into account the momentum of their plane while flying, using gravity and drift to maneuver as much as forward propulsion. There is no health bar: player health is indicated by a circle around the aircraft that shrinks as damage increases and naturally regenerates when not firing the weapon. Aircraft can be customized with dozens of combinations of engines, weapons, and hulls  that affect the soundtrack as much as the gameplay. Each weapon part comes with sets of challenges that give objects to strive for on top of the arcade nature of the game.

Development

Jan Willem Nijman of Vlambeer started Luftrausers while on the airplane home from the March 2012 Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. Polygon reported that he was inspired by the "beauty of his view" and did not have on-flight television. At the time, Vlambeer was finishing development on Ridiculous Fishing, a game whose development was marked by a high-profile struggle with a similar, subsequent game known as a clone.

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