In Space nobody can hear your brakes squeal.
Astrokill is a fast paced space shoot ‘em up, which, while there’s not much of it, is actually not that bad. While the story is pretty much non-existent beyond “you’re a pilot, kill enemy ships” the game delivers well on its flight and fight mechanics. Currently included are two campaigns portraying your life as a pilot in the the game’s two opposing factions, as well as two standalone missions for each faction.
So, that’s not a lot of content, maybe a half dozen hours worth, more if you go slowly, or try and 100% everything. So, whats Astrokill got going for itself?
Well, it’s a well made space piloting game, and that’s something. With support for keyboard and mouse, gamepads and even joysticks, you can get a large amount of control over your ship, which is essential in a space dogfighter. Personally I found joystick controls very sensitive and ‘off’—but your mileage may vary— and hopefully updates to allow for more customisability in the future will make it easier to get it feeling ‘right’ for you.
Now, flying in atmo and space-flight are two very different beasts, which all boil down to the presence of an atmosphere or the lack thereof. Most atmospheric planes have wings, and are built to fly in one direction: forwards. Conversely, spaceships have no need for control surfaces beyond the need to mount thrusters away from the center of mass, and can fly any which way they like (which is why Borg cubes make sense, no need to have aerodynamic shapes when there’s no atmosphere).
To appease to both sides of the coins, Astrokill allows you to switch between two different thrust modes. Auto-thrust mode treats the ship like an atmospheric fighter in that, you point the ship in a direction and it goes that way, using its thrusters to arrest unwanted momentum and get you back up to speed in the direction you want to go in. Manual mode gets rid of all the annoying controls and gives you full control of your ship in the best way, it conserves momentum and lets you spin around however you want. This is great for space dogfighting, setting your speed and heading, then spinning around and doing flybys at different angles and headings, which is great fun and feels SO DAMN GOOD!
To help stop you from flying off into outer space, you have a brake button which will arrest all momentum and leave you free floating, this can be very good in manual mode —to stop you losing control. Sadly, there’s another auto control which I hate, and which seriously damages my enjoyment of the game:the auto pilot.
Being set in space, Astrokill doesn’t exactly have a lot of environmental objects to keep you within the game world, since it’d be a lot of work to make an infinite game world. In the absence of these barriers your ship is equipped with an autopilot which will automatically slow you down to stop you from flying off into the infinite abyss. Now, picture yourself trying to disengage from an enemy; you fly away to try and get out of their engagement, but all of a sudden, you brake and slow down, and bam.You’re dead! While there is no perfect solution to this problem— maybe a visual barrier or maybe just an alert when you’re getting close— this mechanic nethertheless feels imperfect and damages the game as a whole. External control in a game that promotes free flying and combat openness just doesn’t feel right.
So, the flying is pretty good, but what about the combat? Well, Astrokill has a range of weapons including a variety of cannons, ship to ship missiles and railguns, although the most common ships I’ve come across have a machine gun as primary weapon, and a secondary, larger caliber cannon for more damage. Kinetic ammunition, with lots ships flying around at different speeds, means bullets are going to be going all over the place, so line up your shots and don’t just indiscriminately fire bullets all over the place. Damage is actually pretty well implemented in Astrokill, with ships suffering ‘flameouts’ when damaged. As space ships don’t have control surfaces, all rotation and movement is done through thrusters on all the different surfaces. A flameout on your bottom thrusters means you can’t turn upwards or fly over other objects, you have to compensate for the loss of control. This is a great way to implement damage, and makes damaged ships weaker without reducing speed or just dropping health —weaker and harder to control, a great balance.
Astrokill, is overall a fun little space combat with excellent control, and although it doesn’t have much content *yet*, what it does currently have is enjoyable and well done. It’s well made and has some great, well implemented ideas, and will hopefully stay in development for as long as needed to help the game become better yet.
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