Luftrausers is still a perfect video game

As a nineties kid, I grew up at the tail-end of arcades. I have memories of going to my local mall and feeding quarters into Time Crisis, Silent Scope, and Moto GP machines at Aladdin’s Castle a lot of weekends with my dad. But even those trips were shockingly light on what I’d now refer to as Arcade Games. We played games with interesting peripherals, not classics like Pac-Man or Galaga.

What you need to know about Luftrausers is that it kicks ass.

I have no real nostalgia for arcade games, and it takes a lot of praise for me to even look at games like Sektori, Vampire Survivors, or Balatro that feel like the modern equivalent of quarter munchers. I’ve realized that I’m just not a score chase guy. Well, except for one game: Luftrausers.

What you need to know about Luftrausers is that it kicks ass. Built by Vlambeer (RIP) from the bones of Luftrauser, a Newgrounds flash game the Netherlands-based team built in 2011, Luftrausers (2014) is a hard-hitting run-based arcade plane game that melts minutes, not quarters.

Luftrausers is a very simple game: you can rotate your ship left or right, accelerate, and shoot. It is a 1942-style bullet-hell game that controls like Asteroids, that has you dodging bullets, missiles, and other planes, all while you try to rack up as many kills as you can before you inevitably make a wrong move. You’ll pull off balletic twirls and high-speed near-misses…right until you can’t, and every move is thrilling.

The genius of Luftrausers, though, isn’t the simplicity of the controls; it’s the incredibly deep stable of upgrades and builds you unlock as you go. Your ship is made of a weapon, body, and engine, each of which varies greatly from the previous options. All told, there are 125 different ship combinations you can make, each option with a bespoke name, unique in-level music track, and a series of missions to complete.

Missions range from “kill 10 enemy planes” to “destroy 2 battleships with MAX combo,” making every run feel goal-driven and purposeful. It’s this little bit of direction that, twelve years later, has me continuing to come back to Luftrausers even when the run-based rogue-likes cup runneth over. I need a goal to chase. I’ve long given up on the notion that I’ll be the top rank on a high scores leaderboard, so a game’s progression that is tied to just playing the game is a godsend.

It’s impossible to leave a Luftrausers run without feeling satisfied.

Each mission is tied to a specific part, not the entire plane build, but you don’t need to succeed at the goal with that part. For example, I had a mission for my weapon to destroy 20 enemies without ending a boost. Easy enough to do with the continuous laser weapon, but I finished it in less than ten seconds when I equipped the engine that moved by firing bullets. There’s this creative calculus you’re able to do with the super simple ship options that can make any impossible mission much easier if you just use your noodle.

The real trick of Luftrausers, the thing that has made it stick so hard for me these past years, is how much it’s a Vita game. Luftrausers is a mobile game with runs lasting anywhere from 10 seconds to a handful of minutes. There are no loading screens, and you start a level by hitting the up key. There is always something to do, always a new build to try, and always a new goal to achieve. It’s much more frenetic, but I’d compare Luftrausers much more to a game like Alto’s Odyssey (a Perfect mobile game) than a modern arcade classic like Sektori.

I truly believe it’s impossible to leave a Luftrausers run without feeling some measure of satisfied. Maybe that’s because pulling off a cool move happens every seven seconds, or, more likely, the soundtrack rips. There are three-ish songs in Luftrausers, and there are 128 songs in Luftrausers. The main theme is slightly altered for each part you equip to your ship, and miraculously, every version is the best version. The music in Luftrausers is so good that I often die right when the music hits because of how much I’m tapping along to the beat.

When AAA studios are pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into photo-realistic worlds that tend to blend, it’s refreshing—inspiring even—to see what can be done with sepia-pixel art, four buttons, and a title music track with minor permutations. Distilled simplicity is always so much harder to achieve than it appears, but Vlambeer managed to make the perfect simple thing with Luftrausers. Even a decade later, this bite-sized arcade-y plane game remains perfect.