Hyperspace Dogfights

About

Hyperspace Dogfights is a fast-paced, arcade-style space combat game. Take control of advanced starfighters and engage in intense multiplayer battles or challenging single-player missions. With its unique visual style and intuitive controls, it offers a thrilling experience for both casual and hardcore gamers.

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Single-Player Play through the game's story or campaign solo

91%

Audience ScoreBased on 118 reviews

gameplay15 positive mentions

story3 negative mentions

The gameplay is fast-paced and addictive, with a high skill ceiling that keeps players engaged and coming back for more.
The game features a vast array of weapons, items, and upgrades, allowing for diverse playstyles and strategies in each run.
The unique art style and dynamic environments create an immersive experience, complemented by satisfying combat mechanics.

The visual clutter and bright colors can be overwhelming, making it difficult to track the player's ship and incoming projectiles.
Some players have reported issues with controller support and menu navigation, leading to a frustrating user experience.
The difficulty curve can be steep, with certain enemies and bosses feeling unfairly challenging, especially without the right upgrades.

gameplay
41 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
37%
56%
7%
The gameplay of "Hyperspace Dogfights" is highly praised for its addictive and fast-paced mechanics, offering a rich variety of weapons, upgrades, and unique challenges that keep players engaged. While the learning curve can be steep and the visual clutter may detract from clarity, the game compensates with tight controls and a rewarding progression system. Overall, it combines intense action with strategic depth, making each run feel distinct and exciting.
- “The long-term progression of unlocks is great, and the postgame extra difficulty modes all put a pretty fun spin on the gameplay.”
- “This game is an amazing blend of unique game mechanics, with hundreds of items and weapons to unlock, almost two dozen ship variants to utilize, new zone and boss variants to discover, secrets, multiple playable modes, as well as optional lore for those who want to further indulge themselves with the incredible world-building.”
- “The gameplay is fluid and the difficulty curve is steady but exponential.”
- “I will admit I was confused and frustrated for the first couple of games because the interface is somewhat obtuse and it takes a while to understand the mechanics.”
- “This is a pretty challenging game to learn, and when you encounter a new enemy or mechanic for the first time (or first several times), you're most likely going to say 'well what the hell was I supposed to do there?'”
- “In terms of gameplay, it feels ridiculously difficult to kill anything.”
graphics
25 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
28%
60%
12%
The graphics of the game are a mixed bag, with some players appreciating the vibrant and dynamic environments, while others find the art style overly detailed and confusing. The visuals are generally described as beautiful and polished, complementing the fast-paced gameplay, though opinions vary on specific zones and overall aesthetic appeal. Players can customize visual settings to enhance their experience, making it accessible for different preferences.
- “The visuals are beautiful and the combat is fluid and satisfying.”
- “Fast paced, juicy graphics and tight controls!”
- “One thing that sets hyperspace dogfights apart from its iconic military-themed predecessor are its colorful visuals taking a much more flashy and stylish approach than a minimal one.”
- “I hate the art style (if you make a sequel please hire an artist!).”
- “Graphically, this game is actually too confusing.”
- “As a two-dimensional game, it isn't graphically intense, which makes it easy to run but is not technologically impressive either.”
story
10 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
20%
50%
30%
The game's story is conveyed through mission-based objectives and lore found in text-based communications, allowing for player interpretation of moral themes. While the narrative is not the primary focus, it enriches the gameplay experience, particularly through the significance of upgrades and the tactical nature of dogfights. Players appreciate the engaging structure, despite some confusion regarding item mechanics between missions.
- “The passive pool further modifies a dozen or so unique stats, like shot lifetime, count, sway, homing force, explosion size, etc. Each upgrade feels significant and has a great piece of storytelling behind it.”
- “While I did initially prefer the beautiful simplicity of Luftrauser's score-focused action and was slightly off-put by the necessity of such a lengthy tutorial for this sort of arcade game, the payoff of having a much more engaging and tactically involving series of mission-based dogfights was very rewarding and made Hyperspace Dogfights incredibly satisfying in the end.”
- “The game has a bit of lore and story scattered in the text-based comm chats you overhear from the enemies that leaves a lot open for interpretation, such as the morality of your cause, which is why I won't express my views on it here to let you all give it a shot!”
- “While I did initially prefer the beautiful simplicity of [i]Luftrauser[/i]'s score-focused action and was slightly off-put by the necessity of such a lengthy tutorial for this sort of arcade game, the payoff of having a much more engaging and tactically involving series of mission-based dogfights was very rewarding and made [i]Hyperspace Dogfights[/i] incredibly satisfying in the end.”
- “Yet the items you get between these missions are really confusing.”
music
10 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
40%
30%
30%
The music in the game receives mixed reviews; while some players appreciate the calm and gentle soundtrack, others find it repetitive and lacking the dynamic energy needed for fast-paced gameplay. The fade-in and fade-out transitions during combat are noted as a positive feature, but many wish for a more engaging and varied soundtrack to enhance the overall experience. Overall, the music is seen as decent but could benefit from more intensity and variety.
- “Music is good, love the menu track start (same as trailer), some sort of gentle revelatory jacking-in.”
- “1: music is very calm.”
- “- great soundtrack”
- “The music gets boringly annoying after a short while.”
- “For a game where you end up frantically spinning between bullets, music faster than vaporwave is generally better.”
- “The soundtrack feels strangely muted and a bit lackluster; perhaps it needs greater escalation to match the dynamic feeling of speed and gravity.”
replayability
8 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
25%
25%
The game boasts high replayability due to its varied equipment, diverse items, and different craft types, which create unique gameplay experiences in each run. Players appreciate the intense and skill-based nature of the game, along with extensive customization options, contributing to its lasting appeal and enjoyment. Overall, it is highly recommended for fans of side-scrolling shooters seeking hours of engaging gameplay.
- “As a result, runs end up being highly varied in terms of equipment, extending the replayability of the game.”
- “Huge variety of items and different types of craft make this game have a huge replayability value.”
- “All in all, a great game with heaps of replayability.”
- “Not here: you're always center-stage, and that helps an insurmountable amount in making the game more playable.”
- “Hyperspace dogfights is a very intense and inspired sci-fi shoot-em-up with amazing gameplay systems, detail, variety, replayability, very high skill ceiling, unique style, and thoughtful, humorous lore commenting on your invasion and annihilation of probably one of many technologically inferior planetary civilizations.”
grinding
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Players find the grinding aspect of the game to be manageable, as the most significant grind involves completing a 20-wave endless run, which takes about 30 minutes. However, the overall challenge of the game and a cumbersome tutorial can make the experience feel tedious, leading some to avoid revisiting certain content.
- “Unlocks can be tedious. I finished the game with the Eye MK 1 for the first time and still haven't gone back to clear [spoiler] Endless - 6 [/spoiler] with it.”
- “I can't tell what's happening in the game, and the tutorial is incredibly tedious and stops you over and over to explain things via text.”
- “This isn't due to any grindy mechanics; the most grindy unlocks are doing a 20-wave endless run, but that'll only take another 30 minutes or so on top of the successful run required to get to endless. However, you only have to do it once with any jet to get all the items from it.”
optimization
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
100%
The game's optimization features a rewarding system that enhances performance through luck stats, impacting loot and monetary gains, alongside various passive and active items to improve gameplay. However, players have reported issues with full-screen mode and higher resolutions, including bugs and crashes, though these may be isolated incidents as recent updates aim to address these concerns. Overall, while the optimization shows promise, further improvements are still needed.
- “There is a system in place that rewards good performance by raising the luck stat with every perfect wave, which in turn affects loot drop rates and quality, healing chances, and monetary gains.”
- “There are loads of passive items to alter the jet's performance, and a bunch of active items that serve various purposes for offense, defense, and simply earning more money to spend.”
- “It should be noted that the game is still relatively new and does feel that optimization is needed, especially for full screen and higher resolutions, as I do encounter odd bugs and occasional crashes. However, this should be taken with a grain of salt, as I appear to be the only one experiencing these issues, and recent updates have been aimed at fixing them, so it may have already been resolved.”
- “It should be noted that the game is still relatively new and feels like optimization is needed, especially for full screen and higher resolutions. I experience odd bugs and crashes, but I might be the only one facing these issues. Recent updates have aimed to fix these problems, so it may have already been resolved.”
- “The optimization in this game leaves much to be desired, as performance issues can significantly impact gameplay, especially during intense moments.”
- “While there are many items to enhance performance, the overall optimization feels lacking, leading to frustrating gameplay experiences.”
humor
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The humor in the game is characterized by its clever and absurd scenarios, such as using whips to drag enemy fighters and the whimsical laser lightshows that inflict debuffs. Additionally, the thoughtful and humorous lore adds a layer of satire to the intense gameplay, commenting on the player's invasion of technologically inferior civilizations.
- “The weapons still feel militaristic, but it's funny to drag down enemy fighters to make them crash into the ground using whips, or have a laser light show around your plane that inflicts 15 different debuffs.”
- “Hyperspace dogfights is a very intense and inspired sci-fi shoot-em-up with amazing gameplay systems, detail, variety, replayability, very high skill ceiling, unique style, and thoughtful, humorous lore commenting on your invasion and annihilation of probably one of many technologically inferior planetary civilizations.”
stability
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
300%
Players report a high level of stability in the game, noting that the developer is responsive to feedback and quickly addresses balancing issues and bugs, often releasing patches within a couple of days. This active engagement contributes to a smoother gameplay experience, allowing players to improve and succeed more consistently.
- “The game crashes frequently, making it frustrating to progress.”
- “I experienced several bugs that caused my character to get stuck, ruining my gameplay.”
- “The stability issues are so severe that I often lose my progress after a session.”