Sleeper Games’ new air brawler has you blast, dodge and slice your way through waves of technologically inferior enemies, in ill-fated attempts to prevent planetary extinction events.
While making progress with their space-opera game “Hyperspace Admirals” and potentially securing third party funding in the process, the Germany based studio Sleeper Games has also been prototyping a side project. In their free-flowing 2d rogue-like “Hyperspace Dogfights” you’ll control the fast-evolving fighter jet, fighting 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 wanted to focus on game feel and faster prototyping. The initial three month dev cycle for Dogfights resulted in a condensed but 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.”