SkyRogue Demo

Arcade flight simulators are all about having fun with an aircraft, while riding the winds way up in the sky and shooting at various targets on the ground. However, as fun as they can get, there is always one limitation that keeps you from truly enjoying the freedom of flight: map limitations. Hence, it is quite annoying to find yourself hitting the edge of the world after only a few minutes of flying at top speed.

SkyRogue takes care of that aspect by introducing the procedurally-generated content into the equation, which basically means that the ground beneath you is randomly being created by the game as you go along. Thus, you can theoretically fly forever and not stumble into similar places, although in the case at hand, the generated terrain is not very detailed anyway and there’s not much to see.

The gameplay allows you to either take part in a variety of missions, most of which revolve around your ability to destroy both air and ground targets, or just freely fly around the world with no purpose whatsoever. If you happen to choose the missions, then you get the chance to engage in epic dogfights with other planes, although don’t expect too much realism. In fact, everything is about as basic and as arcade as possible, which is not at all a problem in this case.

As far as the aircraft you get to pilot, they are all quite futuristic-looking and there aren’t too many different models as of yet. However, you do have the option to customize them with a variety of paint jobs, which can at least make you think that you are flying something else. Not only that, but a large selection of missiles and bombs are available as well, which makes the combat that much more exciting.

From a technical point of view, the graphics engine is basic and rather primitive-looking, very much so like Minecraft and similar titles. The environments are blocky and lacking in detail, but that is sort of the point when you opt for the infinite world and procedural algorithms. Thankfully, there are some added post-processing effects to make thing appear more modern, which substantially improve the experience.

All things being equal, maybe not all things benefit a lot from the jumping onto the procedural wagon, but it sorta’ kinda’ works in this case. However, the lack of detail and proper content makes it a bit difficult to stay entertained for longer than a few minutes, which is why SkyRogue's replay value drops a lot as well.