Wings Arena

Wings Arena is a multiplayer-style dogfight played over a bright painterly sea. You fly one chunky little propeller plane and it never stops moving, so there is no standing still and no hiding: you steer with the mouse or the arrow keys, squeeze the trigger, and try to end up behind someone instead of in front of them. The guns run hot after about a second and a half of solid fire and then lock until they cool, which means the pilots who win are the ones who wait for the shot rather than spraying the sky.

Eighteen rivals share the arena with you and every one of them has a name, a paint job and a temper. Rookies fly straight lines and make easy pickings. Sharks come looking for whoever is top of the board, and that will be you soon enough. Careful pilots farm the quiet edges and quietly finish the round mid-table. Get shot down and the pilot who did it goes on your list; get shot down by the same pilot twice and you will start flying differently. Wooden crates bob on the water carrying spread shot, homing rounds, a shield, a repair or an afterburner, and everybody wants them. Soft white clouds drift across the arena and hide whoever is inside them for a few seconds, which is either a good place to lose a tail or a very bad place to go looking for one.

The edge of the arena is a storm front that chews through your hull, so the fight is always pushed back towards the middle. Rounds run three minutes. Kills and crates score, streaks score more, and the feed calls them out as they happen while the top-ten board updates live beside it. Go down and you watch your pilot float away under a parachute for a moment before you are back in the air. At the final horn you get a card with your kills, your best streak and your finishing rank, and your best score and best rank are kept for next time. It plays in a browser window on a laptop and in portrait on a phone with a thumb stick and a fire button, and a quick round is over before your coffee is.