Seventeen year old iPhone developer Joshua Rosen of Axios, who brought us SciFly: Dogfight [App Store], has given us an update on his forthcoming iPhone title Above & Beyond Air Combat. We previewed the game at E3 back in June when it was called SciFly 2. Rosen indicates that it has evolved so significantly since then that it has really become something entirely new.
With an armada of customizable combat aircraft at your disposal, you are challenged to explore and conquer the fully 3D, open-world environments of Above & Beyond Air Combat.
Engage in action packed air-to-air and air-to-ground combat with enemy aircraft, battleships, and turrets as you battle for control of island strongholds.
Features as listed by the developer:
- Customize 12 advanced combat aircraft
- Upgrade your aircraft with over 15 different weapons and numerous thrusters, shields, and other enhancements.
- Explore over 60 islands in a fully 3D, open-world environment.
- Engage in 3 unique battle modes: Gauntlet, Survival, and Conquest.
- Share highscores and achievements via the fully integrated OpenFeint 2.1 service.
- Enjoy *your* music with in-game music library integration.
- Several options to calibrate and tune controls to your personal preference
- Initial loading times are very quick, and there are rarely any loading times during gameplay
A core element of the game is aircraft customization. Each aircraft has its own set of stats as well as a number of equipment sockets which can be filled with weapons, thrusters, or various other upgrades earned across any of the game’s three play modes. Weapons include machine guns, lasers, flak cannons, missiles, ray guns, and more.
While the Conquest mode is really the heart of the game, Gauntlet and Survival modes add a bit of variety. Gauntlet sends the player down a route full of tight canyons, sharp turns, and fast straightaways, while Survival is a bid to stay alive as long as possible, fending off wave after wave of enemy targets while racking up points.
See the developer’s new gameplay video for a look at the action. (The original trailer, that gives a different look at the game, can be seen here.)
Above & Beyond Air Combat has recently been submitted to the App Store and should be available for download in the next few weeks.
