Tucked somewhere between FTL Cannon Fodder and Kerbal Space Program, Runner Duck’s Bomber Crew sees you commanding the crew of a Bomber during World War II.
The mission was simple, scout out a facility in occupied France; maintain high altitude and use my bombardier to snap a picture of the sites before heading home — easy. Well, easy but for the anti-aircraft cannons, enemy fighters and, now, an enemy flying ace chasing me down and heckling me with dumb insults. Bomber Crew is built around emergent moments along the way, around things getting worse before they get better, about a clear blue sky turning grey as you’re forced into high altitudes by anti-aircraft guns and deciding whether you risk freezing your crew to death, or seeing the plane shredded by 3.7cm flak
Much like the earlier cited FTL, Bomber Crew’s campaign is deceptively simple, you actually only need to complete a set amount of missions in order to unlock a finish state AND (unlike most of the games of the ilk) there’s no fail-state in the game, so it’s entirely up to the pace that the player sets. Of course, that doesn’t make it easy, you’re always against the odds and it only gets harder as dynamic weather or enemy aces start interfering with your carefully laid plans.
The real comparison with FTL, however, comes in the fact that you’re a manager, not a member of the team. Bomber Crew sees you activating crew abilities, or issuing orders to them, but not directly firing the guns or tilting the plane. One thing you will take direct control over, however, is the equipment and load-out of the bomber and crew.
Before each mission you can spend your campaign funds on refitting your aircraft with upgrades, as well as buying armour and protective gear for your crew. There’s an interesting, RPG aspect to the equipment’s role. Each of the character’s stats are altered by the gear they are wearing, and while they’ll naturally become more adept at their job as they level up, if you give an engineer fingerless gloves they’ll be a lot more deft than the oven-glove-esque protective gear you might be tempted to strap onto your favour gunner.
There’s other considerations as well, some gear is great at keeping you warm at altitudes, while other things give you access to better oxygen supply for when the the air gets thin.
As the missions rack up for your favourite crew member, the one who you’ve accidentally mentally assigned traits to, made sacred, and consider a right good cobber, the temptation is to strap them up in survival gear so that if the plane goes down they’ll likely make it back to base. In doing so, however, you risk condemning your mission to failure; preparing to lose the battle regardless of the war because the one with the funny nose shouldn’t have to die.
Each of the stations on the plane have their own way of interacting with the world when manned: the navigator will create indicators for you to lock on to, the gunners will fire when you lock onto an enemy target, and the pilot… yeah, that makes sense. Several of the stations have addition features, for instance clicking on the bomber brings up a viewing point which shows the game from the bombardier’s viewpoint – you’ll use this (and clicking the photo/release button) to hit targets or take pictures if you’re running reconnaissance missions. And, if Billy-Bomb gets shot then you’ll need to get somebody else down there in order to complete the mission.
As characters become more adept they unlock extra abilities, one which was showcased was an ability for the radio operator which, when activated, saw them automatically activated any target markers, meaning that all gunners were instantly made aware of which enemies to fire upon. Similarly, those gunners receive extra ammo types as they level up, which, depending on the situation might well make light work of enemy planes.
From that early outfitting, pre-mission stage and through the first half of most missions, the game very much has the feel of Kerbal Space Program; a simplified (while still very measured in reality) simulation with a lot of switch flicking and button pressing required for maximum efficiency. In Bomber Crew, as I said earlier, you don’t control the flight path of the plane directly, but you do need to activate the instructions which your radar crew are giving. An adept radar crew member will give prompt, efficient instructions, but if you’re too busy activating enemy indicators for your gunners to take down then you’ll end up off course. It’s a clever way to ensure you’re using all your crew even while they are simply manning a station, and it also makes use of the game’s 3D engine, with the indicators requiring you to rotate the camera even while the environments around you at the time offer nothing to engage with.
Later missions, which can see you travelling as far as Austria, really test your crew management and the strength of your load-outs. There’s also a vastly lower chance of your crew making it back in one piece should the plane get shot down, or ditch.
Unlike the three other games I’ve mentioned in this piece, Bomber Crew gives you ample routes to getting your crew back; once shot they go into a downed state which can be resolved with the trusty med-pack; if the plane’s going down you can parachute out to safety below; and, should you ditch in the right way then survival chances are still viable. Sure, you’ll need to equip the plane with a homing pigeon, and you’ll need to get a lot of (chunky) survival gear there, but there’s most definitely a chance that the one with the funny nose will turn up back at base a few days or weeks later.
The decision from Runner Duck to stick with the World War II setting when it could have been transposed to a fictional war (see early mission settings of Valkyria Chronicles) is, sadly, going to haunt quite a few discussions regarding the game; importantly though, in my opinion, it’s also going to ease a comparison to a game which it has a lot in common with: Cannon Fodder.
Cannon Fodder was a phenomenon in the UK when it launched back in 1993, it garnered negative press due to its subject matter, while also showcasing an early and potent instance of emergent narrative — each recruit had a set name, would gain promotions as they survive yet also die with a single shot. The reward for survival in Cannon Fodder’s depiction of war was simply more war and a shiny badge, and the cost of failure was a headstone on boot hill, never seeing that person again, and a number clicking up by one. War is bad, it said, you’ll get attached to seeing that name there and then thwhip they’ve taken a stray bullet, or stood on a mine, or triggered a spike trap and, that’s it, they’re gone for ever.
As with Bomber Crew and other games of the ilk, what also helped with players attaching themselves to those little blighters in Cannon Fodder was the fact that the characters start off as blank tablets, with you seeing or causing all of their heroics and near misses.
After all of that though, much like in war, another recruit replaces the fallen, and the push onward must continue. There’s nothing trivial or nice about war, and in being made in a way which builds attachment to characters games like XCOM, Cannon Fodder, and now Bomber Crew, can serve to remind people of that without having to box people off to experience it themselves.
Bomber Crew is releasing on the 19th of October for PC. It will be releasing on Xbox One, PS4 and Switch at later, currently undefined times.
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