Blazing a trail in the middle of the Yorkshire Games Festival’s floor with its fast-paced gameplay was BoxFrog Games’ futuristic racer Lost Wing. After spending some time in Steam Greenlight, the team from Manchester released Lost Wing into early access on Steam only a couple of days after the event, where we had the chance to try it.
Lost Wing is about speed from the off, from the bright neon lines directing your eyes down the length of the track to the sleek, pace-demanding shape of your ship and the score splashed across the side of the screen prompting you to ever greater scores. Of course, not being particularly good at racing games didn’t do us any favours in the score department, but we did our best.
Naturally, you’re going to want to accelerate, which is a one-button action, but this can land you in hot water if you don’t have some sophistication in your use of speed. A multitude of obstacles litter the race track and unless you have the reaction times of an orangutan on speed (or just… not us), you’ll want to be careful about avoiding them.
You can do this in one of three ways: swerving around them, which works but still carries the risk of crashing; shooting them, which gives you a load of points, more than you’d get from avoiding everything, and tends to be more effective as long as you keep on top of your actions; or slowing down time before doing either of the previous two, which is a nifty feature you can use for a momentary thinking breather.
The aim of the game, for us, then, was to score as many points as we could before losing all our lives. These deaths happened in rather quick succession due to the aforementioned reason of being terrible at racing, so we didn’t manage to reach the end of the level: apparently there are bosses to fight. Only one person, according to Lost Wing’s Twitter, managed to reach the level boss during the festival, so it certainly sounds like a challenge to aspire to. It’s a lot more motivation than just ‘cool, you got to the end slightly faster than last time without dying’, that’s for sure.
If you feel the need for speed in a flash, futuristic setting, Lost Wing looks to be the game for you. Quick thinking is the order of the day, with big boss battles and those tantalising spots on the leaderboard to keep you racing. You can pick up its early access version now on Steam for PC and Mac.
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