Back when I saw Enemy Starfighter at PAX East 2014, I was pretty impressed with both the game and its impeccable pedigree. Developer Mike Tipul has been pretty quiet since then, but today he broke cover to explain where the game is at, and show-off the current state of play.
All I can say is… OH MY.
Tipul promises the game is likely coming to Early Access this summer, after the E3 tidal wave of news. Since I last saw the game, he’s added a huge number of features. He’s brought in Oliver Zuccaro, the composer behind EYE Divine Cybermancy and the BSG fan mod for Freespace 2, Beyond the Red Line, to score the game.
But most importantly, it looks like Enemy Starfighter really has become the dogfighting-strategy game hybrid Tipul promised. But that’s easier to show than explain, so I’ll let Tipul’s most recent gameplay footage do the talking.
There’s nothing about this I don’t love. The fighter itself seems to have a great feel of inertia, so that you’re fighting your own momentum and drift rather than getting the kind of instant-response you’re used to from games like TIE Fighter. The audio is hugely atmospheric, and I think the stylized graphics look great.
But what surprised me the most, seeing this video, is just how robust your fleet-command options are. I wonder how intuitive it will be for those of us who did not develop the game, but it’s still cool to see that you can be assigning your fleet targets one moment, then flying your ship the next. I just hope it has some TrackIR support so that I can glance around the cockpit at-will.
We’ll definitely be paying close attention to this one from here on our. In the meantime, Tipul’s blog gives you a great sense of the work that’s gone into this and what the final game will look like.