Hey there! I'm a sucker for these kinds of games, so I gave it a whirl yesterday!
A few comments:
- It works under linux through Wine!, but is slower, as expected.
- The game lags a bit on relatively old laptop, which I find odd: 1.73ghz P4, NVidia Go 7300 128+128(shared)mb, 2gb, XP SP3
- When you double-ctrl to invert directions and you're at somewhat high speeds, the plane flickers a bit and the position jumps around a bit, which is sort of disorienting
- The altimeter idea is pretty great, as it is indeed veeeeeery hard to know how high you are. Either that, or add sort of in-game markers for altitude, like a horizontal line of clouds of different types, maybe a change of colour of the sky?
- I can confirm being booted to the first campaign mission when I die in the tutorial and try to refly (instead of quitting to menu)
- I do not dislike the current HUD, as it makes the game a bit more thematic, but it does take up a bit of valuable space, especially since it is right at the middle. No suggestions come up for this though!
- Sometimes on the campaign map, instead of landing on the carrier, I pass through it and go out of the screen for no apparent reason, without actually dying.
Now regarding gameplay: the game plays very "ponderously". The facts that the turn rate is really low and that the speeds aren't that high make the combat a lot more tactical, as you can think about what moves you can do, although double-ctrl will usually get you out of tight situations with no problem. It's working as a universal get-away trick right now, one that, say, Triplane Turmoil does not have, which means you have to shake'em off your tail. If the enemies learned to use double-ctrl, the game would be more challenging dogfight-wise.
There's also this weird thing where you can put a WWI plane one a vertical climb without stalling, which is highly unrealistic, and removes a challenge gameplay-wise that is interesting to have to deal with, in my opinion
Personally, I'd prefer if the planes moved faster and turned better, to make the action a bit more frantic. That and actual stalling would change the way the dogfights are played out, and that may not be to your liking. There's no good or bad here, just different takes on preferred gameplay!
It's also hard to aim the bombs for me since they actually seem to get "fired" forward instead of just dropping. They should, at least, simply drop alongside the plane and lose altitude (and maybe horizontal speed).
Finally, I haven't gotten past the first mission because of either small bugs, or the difficulty of simply flying/landing. I don't think I've ever been shot down, but crash way too often while trying to land, running into buildings (used to flying through flags and some buildings from Triplane Turmoil), performing a turn without enough altitude and the likes. Whether this is an issue for the gameplay you want is up to you
One thing that's hard to deal with is the constant presence of 4 enemy planes in the air. They simply keep spawning, and make your task of keeping the skies clear a bit too hard to manage, since you really have no chance and can't focus on the tanks much. Maybe add a slight delay, or a build queue like for the tanks?
Now, all this said, I'll repeat what Muku mentioned: I point out all these things because the game looks so interesting, and I just want it to get better! I would also like to commend you very much for being able to put on such a nicely polished and aesthetic game. It all comes together really nicely! All the art is top-notch (although I don't like the commander so much. Maybe its the aggressive looking eyes, or the semi-cartoony look when the rest is sort of realistic?), the menus work well too, so basically I feel the production values are very good for an indie game
Cheers, and congratulations!
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