Rocking Pilot Reviews

Simple and enjoyable. Not very long, unless you are going for the leaderboards.

This game blew me away. One of my all time favorite shmups. Incredible game and an amazing price.

Rocking Pilot is a simplistic skill based 2D retro top down action game where you control a helicopter in a single screen arena. Waves of enemies swarm at you and you must avoid them or kill them by bashing them with your rotor blades, making this a very much twitch-orientated game. While there's an upgrade system and a couple of different game modes, it's still a simple, shallow affair with little depth or interest for gamers, but at least it's not an asset flip? From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. The game features simple, cartoony 2D graphics, of the type you normally expect to see in low effort mobile apps. 3D graphics programming does require a degree of skill and competence and unfortunately not all developers have the budget or talent to deliver this, despite 3D graphics cards hitting the mainstream in the 1990's. Considering this is being evaluated as a PC game, having the graphics phoned in like this isn't going to result in a high quality, visually impressive game that PC gamers are used to seeing. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts. This looks and feels like a mobile app, but it doesn't seem to have made it to the app stores. It's unclear why this was put on Steam instead of the app stores it seems to have been designed for. Maybe it was removed, maybe it was rejected by Apple and Google (they do have more rigorous quality standards than Valve does for Steam, after all). Regardless, for all intents and purposes Rocking Pilot might as well be a mobile app, it has the same limitations and dumbed down qualities. It's impossible to recommend such a game to PC gamers. We don't spend all this money building gaming rigs so we can pretend they're iPhones and play games that might as well be mobile apps. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. You don't have to take my word about how bad the game is, we can measure the interest in a game by how much people bothered to play it. Rocking Pilot has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the game absolutely failed to capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is for unlocking the "score" game mode, trivial to achieve, but less than 5 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the game. That's a tiny, tiny proportion of gamers who even bothered with this. Ouch. Reviewing SteamDB to check how popular this game was with players reveals a surprise... there's a very healthy spike in player counts for the game. But this isn't consistent with the achievement stats, that show less than 5 percent of players bothered playing the game for any reasonable amount of time. How is it possible for this game to have so many concurrent players who weren't even playing the game? Trading cards. Players will use card idling software to collect the cards and sell them, but this won't trigger any achievements in-game. That tells us people only really bought this game for trading cards, and that's a damning indictment of the woeful quality. A closer look at the numbers shows the game just has a couple of players every week running up the game and idling it for cards, then deleting it. We must ask how it benefits gamers for there to be so many games like this, with no merit as a serious game, that only generate sales from people idling and selling the trading cards. You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality game this comes across more as a delusion of grandeur than anything else. This agreement includes questionable requirements that may attempt to revoke consumer law protections that gamers expect to have, which is also highly problematic. Developers must learn they are here to serve gamers, not control them. I had my cat walk over the keyboard while the EULA was displaying, which fixed that problem for me. Rocking Pilot is relatively cheap at $3 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend.

I like twin stick shooters and this is a very good little game. Certainly worth the time and the asking price.

Funny Game! I really loved the one helicopter shmup on sega dreamcast (forgot the name). I hoped it would be ported to other platforms maybe, but it never happened. But this game comes pretty close to it, so it was an instabuy for me. Most shmups are with military jets, but I like helicopter way more. And well finally I got a new fun to play helicopter shmup I was waiting for so long :)

Listen to me.. if you like twin stick shooters, go and take this game. Just trust me. I never imagined that playing with such simple graphics and gameplay in a small rectangle could be such a pleasure. The missions and points are very catchy and I can't stop running them again and again. There is something like history and the replicas are humorous. That's what I can share. I'm in for some more cracking :)

I really dig this game! Play sessions are compartmentalized into little bursts... easy to pick up and play for just a minute at a time. There aren't enough games like this. The game gets better and better as you play, and the developers did a wonderful job of expanding the game mechanics and keeping things fresh. I finished the game 100% but it is a feeling like I'm sad to be done, it was that much fun. I like the streamlined UI which is large, easy to read, and gets you into battle quickly while communicating objectives fast. No needless BS, slowdowns, animations or clutter, just pure go-time. And the music, sound and presentation are exciting and go great. Some have expressed concern about the large graphics and seemingly-cramped play area, but honestly I find that only adds to the speed, excitement and crispness required for good play. I got this on sale for $1 and I feel like I ripped them off.

Good core gameplay. Using propellers as a weapon and as a shield - slicing enemies and deflecting bullets is really cool. It follows standard shooter formula but its fun on its own. Art wise, I wish there was more contrast in colors so that explosions and enemies stand out more, but it is not a big deal. Lots of fun overall.

Wow, this game deserves more players. It's so much fun, and at the current price of $1 it's a steal. Each level has its own challenges. As you complete challenges, you can unlock new powerups and new stages. There are also score attack modes for many of the stages which give you plenty of opportunity to shoot for high scores, compete with others, all while enjoying the fast paced and super fun gameplay. Great job, Dev!

This game is absolutely smashing. No load-screens, no cut-scenes, no fluff, instant restarts. It's like popcorn and bubble wrap had one big explosive baby all rolled into one. Very satisfying with a great progress system done with universal icons that everyone can understand so no text gets in the way. This is how shoot 'em ups should be made