Plane Wars
About This Game
Mouse-flown dogfighting with six unlockable aircraft and a real flight model.
Aerial combat flown entirely with the mouse. The aeroplane turns towards your cursor and the left button fires, so there is nothing to learn before the first fight - but the flight model underneath is a real one.
The turn comes from banking, the aircraft pulls its own back pressure so a held turn stays level, and bullets travel: at four hundred metres a round is over a second in the air, which means shooting where a target is going rather than where it is. Seven other aircraft are in the sky at once, flying the same model through the same physics with the same guns - an easy opponent is not given a better aeroplane, only a steadier hand, and it solves a genuine intercept rather than rolling dice against the range.
Six aircraft to unlock, and none of them is simply a bigger version of the last: the trainer turns as well as anything and the interceptor is the fastest thing in the arena and the hardest to fly. Kills and finishing position pay coins.
Full instrument layer - contact boxes with name, range and health, edge arrows for anything off screen, a nose-up radar, kill feed, match clock and live leaderboard. Solo against tiered opposition, or a multiplayer lobby with a ready check and a shared match seed.
How to Play Plane Wars
- Move the mouse
- The aircraft turns toward the cursor.
- Left mouse button or Space
- Fire.
- Touch
- Drag to fly. Touching the screen also fires.
- Esc
- Pause.
Rules
- A 150-second dogfight against seven other aircraft. Standings are kills first, then fewest deaths.
- You have three lives. The match ends when the clock runs out or you have used all three. Opponents respawn without limit.
- Bullets take time to arrive, so you have to aim where a target is going. Flying into the ground counts as a death.
- Six aircraft, each with a different trade-off: Paper Kite (free trainer), Shrike (220 coins), Hornet (420), Iron Boar (620), Lance (900) and Wraith (1,300).
- Opponent difficulty changes how well the other pilots aim, react and turn, not what they fly. The aircraft around you are drawn from the range near your own.
- Coins: 12 per kill, plus 90 for first place, 60 for second, 40 for third, and less down to 4 for eighth.
Tips for Plane Wars
- Lead your shots. Put the cursor ahead of a crossing target, further ahead the further away it is.
- Iron Boar cannot follow anyone into a turn; Hornet turns inside anything but has short reach. Pick a fight that suits your aircraft.
- Lives are scarce and opponents' are not. A safe kill and an escape are worth more than a risky head-on pass.
- Keep some height. A dive to chase a target can end in the ground.
Questions
Is the multiplayer lobby against real people?
Not at the moment. There is no game server behind it, so the lobby fills with computer pilots and says LOCAL MATCH on screen.