The developers of Astro Attack (Free), an incredibly fun vertical shoot ’em up that launched back in the spring of 2016, are back at it again with another game about flying vehicles and shooting stuff. This time around it’s a game called Sky Squadron, and they describe it as a blend of Star Fox and Crimson Skies. Ah Crimson Skies, a game I remember fondly for being bundled with the Xbox Live starter kit on the original Xbox way back in the early aughts. Anyway, the idea behind Sky Squadron is to have an on-rails shooter experience similar to the Star Fox games but using the more grounded “sky pirates in the era of World War I" theming. I mean more grounded compared to anthropomorphic animals flying around in space. Here is a VERY early video showing where Sky Squadron is currently at, but keep in mind that it’s EARLY so things look pretty rough around the edges.

So that whole part about Sky Squadron being very early in development is where you can come in, dear readers. The developers loved the feedback and engagement they got from the TouchArcade community when developing Astro Attack, so they’re hoping for a similar level of interest while creating Sky Squadron. This means that if you’re liking how the game is looking and want to help shape its outcome, you can apply to be a beta tester by visiting the game’s forum thread and looking for the links in the first post that will whisk you away to a Google Doc to sign up for testing as well as a link to a Discord server to facilitate easy communication. We’ll be keeping an eye on how Sky Squadron progresses but in the meantime if you want to get an early peek then be sure to sign up for beta testing.