I’ve always wanted to go skydiving. Aerial_Knight’s DropShot, from indie developer Aerial_Knight, lets me live that dream in a safe, virtual way. It also lets me shoot bullets from finger guns, wield laser skulls, and wear cool sunglasses while falling through the air. So maybe it’s better than the real thing.
Playing as a character named Smoke Wallace, who gained a finger gun that can shoot bullets after being bitten by a dragon, you plummet toward the ground and try to pick off bad guys with the finger gun or by punching them up close. It’s a first-person game, and the perspective really enhances the feeling of falling through the sky.
Your goal is to survive each level without taking more than two hits from bad guys or other dangers like lasers, while taking down as many enemies as possible as quickly as possible. Your gun has limited bullets, but you can refill your ammo by shooting or flying into balloons you see as you fall.
Each level is short. I finished most of them in 45 seconds to a minute and a half. At the end, you get a letter grade based on how many enemies you defeat, maxing out at S+++ if you reach a certain per-level goal. Since terrain, obstacles, enemies, and speed boosts appear in the same spot each level, repeating them to get a high score turns each level into fast-paced FPS puzzles you can solve to find the optimal route.
The game oozes style. Smoke Wallace has purple skin because of his dragon bite. He wears sunglasses, and you can choose different styles that give you power-ups for finding the eggs, like one that lets you fire six finger guns at a time. Every time you kill a bad guy, the game briefly goes into slow-motion. You’ll even face bosses like dragons and flying tanks. Throughout, you’ll enjoy an awesome heavy metal soundtrack.
I finished DropShot in about two-and-a-half hours, and I could spend more time grinding S+++ scores if I wanted to. But I think the short length works in the game’s favor: DropShot explores its core mechanics in 50 great levels without stretching them into something that might become tedious. Even near the end, I was excited every time I flew through the sky.