#This hidden indie roguelite combines style staples with CoD gunship gameplay—and it is a shocking banger – Destructoid

“ENEMY AC-130 ABOVE!” Should you instantly hear this voiceline in your head and really feel a shiver down your backbone, then do I’ve the indie recreation for you.

The traditional AC-130 gunship killstreak that made its mark on gaming tradition approach again in Name of Responsibility: Fashionable Warfare 2 has been Vampire Survivors-ized in a enjoyable indie title that was delivered to my consideration this morning, and I’ve been having a very good little bit of enjoyable taking part in it thus far in its early entry providing.

Steel Thunder is its identify, and it comes from a solo developer by the identify of “Tolga.” The sport, which launched in Steam early entry this previous November, options AC-130 gameplay wrapped up in action-roguelite upgrades a la Vampire Survivors and different video games prefer it, and it makes for a fairly distinctive expertise.

Should you had been expert (or fortunate) sufficient to nab an AC-130 killstreak in MW2 again within the day, the gameplay will instantly really feel acquainted to you. You fly excessive above a battlefield, defending your pursuits from invading troopers and automobiles whereas biking by way of quite a lot of weapons that you just unlock by taking part in the sport as you’ll any roguelite, leveling up and incomes new and improved abilities.

Whereas the “Survivors” style of video games is normally extra passive, Steel Thunder provides its personal wrinkle by permitting you to intention and fireplace every weapon in 20-minute lengthy missions, unlocking new weapons and perks akin to your personal artillery, automobiles, or infantry to assist defend your goal whereas using the trademark thermal cameras of a high-powered fashionable gunship within the sky. Anticipate 30mm cannons, 120mm cannons, gatling weapons, phosphorus cannons, and extra as you play by way of quite a lot of missions and locales with differing goals.

As a fan of each CoD and the “survivors” style, this instantly appealed to me when it hit my e mail inbox this morning, catching my consideration from the dozen or so different video games that I’m alerted about every week. Tolga was fast to ship over a duplicate of the sport for me to check out, and I’m comfortable to say that it scratched the itch I used to be anticipating it to, combining totally different genres and concepts to provide one thing distinctive.

Steel Thunder is in early entry and has a roadmap of deliberate content material to execute on, together with a marketing campaign with extra and new missions to go together with its present Survival providing, and even a Zombies mode ultimately with its personal marketing campaign, weapons, and maps.

It’s at the moment $10.99 on Steam, and has sufficient of a base expertise and problem for now to justify the value, however will probably solely get higher with time because it approaches 1.0 launch.