Lost Wing review

Lost Wing is shmup, or shoot’em up, game without any story. The game is an endless type arcade game where all you have to do is fly and survive through the various traps and obstacles spread across the various levels.

Unlike traditional shmups where you go from point A to point B, Lost Wing’s levels have a tunnel like design where the player’s view is from behind the ship and you move left and right or jump to avoid obstacles standing in your way. You also can shoot certain obstacles in order to give you a bit more room to breathe; you can also pick up a bomb which will clear a handful of nearby obstacles instantly.

Again, going against the shmup formula, your ship can actually run out of ammo. Normally, ships in shmups games have a default unlimited projectile attack to make sure they can reach the end of the level and clear incoming threats. So with Lost Wing, players will need to mindful of what to destroy and simply avoid. It’s a bit of nuisance and takes a bit of getting used to thus not a deal breaker.

Obviously, you have to be asking yourself what happens if you take damage? There’s a few things that can happen. If you hit an obstacle head on, you’re dead. However, if you hit one of your wings, you’ll still be able to fly (even if you lose both!), but you won’t be able to move as fast as you’d like on the side of the missing wing. For example, if you lose your left wing and you need to move left to avoid an upcoming obstacle, chances are you won’t move fast enough to dodge it. You’ll be happy to hear however that you can pick up replacement wings.

There’s also an interesting mechanic where you can either slow down or increase your ship’s speed. The former can be very helpful when missing a wing and trying to dodge an obstacle, although you move even slower; it’s not perfect but better than nothing. And you can speed up if you want to step up the challenge a bit.

Along with replacement wings, you can pick up ammo, bombs, power ups to make your ship bigger or smaller, A.I. bots that will provde cover fire or an item that will invert the level and subsquently the controls. As you play over and over, you’ll obviously try to avoid some of these items as making your ship bigger increases the chances of crashing into a few things.

The main problem with this game is that you can only unlock additional levels based on your player level. As you fly and destroy obstacles, you accumulate points which are cumulated after you die 3 times. Points reward players with XP allowing you to unlock new levels. But the scoring feels like a slog to increase and unless you practice over and over, it might take a while before you can enjoy a change of scenery.

Lost wing features a unique neon sci-fi aesthetic color palette. The problem with the darker tone environments is that some obstacles actually mesh with the environment meaning that you sometimes see them at the last minute and it can be too late to avoid them. Also menu navigation is pretty confusing as well and the game won’t let you change the difficulty easily (nor will it explain you how to change it); you can change it before starting the game, but it won’t let you play. The soundtrack of the game is synthwave lite/ambient inspired score to help players stay focused on the obstacle filled course. Nothing outstanding, but it fits pretty well with the oft-hectic gameplay.

Through my multiple sessions of Lost Wing, I realized that the only thing holding back is the nuisance caused by actually running out of ammo; it’s a bit unfathomable given that this is a shmup. Otherwise, this is an interesting entry in the hardcore genre. Fans of the shmup genre will be delighted to play something different, unfortunately it’s not the ideal game for newcomers.