Jet-combat with swords: “Hyperspace Dogfights” annnounced

Sleeper Games new air brawler Hyperspace Dogfights [Official Site] has you blast, dodge and slice your way through waves of technologically inferior enemies. You'll fly for the executive branch of the galactic community, on ill-fated missions to stop planetary extinction events.

We contacted lead developer Stefan Widany to ask about their Linux support and got this unexpected, but nonetheless awesome response:

@gamingonlinux Yep, Linux is definitely happening. I'm actually developing and testing everything on Ubuntu 14.04.

— Stefan Widany (@Sleeper_Games) January 12, 2017

While making progress with their primary space-opera game “Hyperspace Admirals” and potentially securing third party funding in the process, the Germany based studio has also been prototyping this side project. In this free-flowing 2d roguelike air brawler you’ll control a fast-evolving fighter jet, set against waves of air and ground-based enemies. As the game progresses, the player jet becomes stronger (and weirder!) by acquiring some of the hundreds of items available in the game. Overall the game unifies elements from shmup games and hack-and-slash action, framed within a rogue-like system featuring permadeath and many unlockables.

For Hyperspace Dogfights, Sleeper Games say they wanted to focus on game feel and faster prototyping. The initial three month dev cycle for Dogfights resulted in a condensed but what they hope is a refined product, featuring fluid 2d movement of the player jet, various enemy types and weapons, as well as dozens of passive items and a final boss for the first zone.

“Switching to the open-source GDevelop engine gave me a lot of freedom” Lead Designer Stefan Widany says. “We got quite far in the first three months and we’ll soon launch on itch.io refinery to gather a wider range of much needed feedback.”

No exact news on release date or pricing, but this could be one to keep your eye on and it doesn't sound like we'll have long to wait for the first releases to land.

About Sleeper Games
Leipzig-based Sleeper Games is an independent game studio consisting of long time FTL modder Stefan Widany, programmers Rann Lifshitz and Tomasz Bachmiński, as well as various international collaborators. The studio focuses on iterating upon powerful game design concepts and remixes them into sweet new blends of experience.

Thanks to Stefan Widany for letting us know!