Air Combat XF

Air Combat XF is a 3D flight action arcade game set in a fictional conflict between the nations of Willsword and the Maxell Federation. Players pilot the advanced XF-97 prototype fighter, equipped with MD armor that weakens enemy missiles with lasers and EMP, to defend their airspace and prevent war. The game features six levels of escalating conflict, from intercepting UAVs and enemy aircraft to destroying supply transports and facing off against ace pilots, all set to an original soundtrack.

Air Combat XF: A Forgotten Skirmish in the Indie Flight Simulator Pantheon

In the vast and often uncurated library of digital storefronts, countless games are launched into the ether, destined to be forgotten by all but the most dedicated archivists. Air Combat XF, a 2018 indie flight action title from developer Sonic-Alpha and publisher NS, is one such artifact. It is a game that embodies the very definition of a mixed reception—a title with ambitions of arcade dogfighting glory, hamstrung by its own technical limitations and a development ethos that feels more like an asset-flip experiment than a passion project. This review seeks to excavate Air Combat XF from its obscurity, analyzing its place not as a genre-defining masterpiece, but as a fascinating case study of indie game development in the late 2010s.

Development History & Context

Studio and Vision
Sonic-Alpha operates as a prolific but enigmatic developer, with a portfolio on Steam that includes nearly twenty titles, ranging from other aerial combat games like Massive Air Combat and Air Combat MF to seemingly unrelated genres. Their output suggests a studio focused on volume, leveraging accessible tools to produce a steady stream of content. Air Combat XF was published under the banner “NS,” a name that appears across their catalog, further cementing the image of a small, perhaps even solo, development operation.

The vision for Air Combat XF, as stated repeatedly in its official materials, is disarmingly straightforward: “Note that this game is just an arcade game.” This is less a tagline and more a disclaimer, a preemptive lowering of expectations. The goal was not to simulate the visceral terror of aerial warfare or to craft a narrative epic, but to create a simple, accessible 3D flight action experience. This was to be a pick-up-and-play title, a digital diversion priced at a mere $0.99 upon release.

Technological Constraints and The Unity Engine
The game is built on the Unity engine, a powerful and flexible tool that has democratized game development but is also infamous for hosting a plethora of low-effort projects that rely heavily on pre-made assets. Air Combat XF‘s credits page reads like a directory of Unity Asset Store contributors, listing over twenty distributors and individual creators from whom models, sounds, and other elements were sourced. This approach is not inherently negative—many great games use store assets effectively—but in this case, it contributes to a disjointed and inorganic feel, a world built from disparate parts rather than a cohesive whole.

The game’s initial release in December 2018 (Version 1.00) was followed by a significant update to Version 2.00 in February 2019. This update, which added new levels, aircraft, and a completely new soundtrack composed by “NS,” indicates a developer responsive to feedback, yet the core experience remained fundamentally unchanged.

The Gaming Landscape of 2018
In 2018, the flight combat genre was experiencing a quiet renaissance. Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown was on the horizon, generating immense hype for its return to form. The indie scene, meanwhile, was flooded with games of varying quality, all vying for attention on Steam. In this environment, Air Combat XF was a tiny speck—a budget-title attempt to tap into the appeal of aerial combat without the budget, scope, or polish of its contemporaries. It was a game designed for a market of bargain hunters and genre completists.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

To call Air Combat XF‘s offering a “narrative” would be generous. It provides a skeletal framework of lore to contextualize its aerial skirmishes, a pastiche of generic military sci-fi tropes.

The Plot and Worldbuilding
The conflict is set between three fictional nations:
* Willsword: The player’s country, a technological underdog.
* Maxell: The antagonistic federation, named with a curious homage to a brand of cassette tapes.
* Ulcafy: The allies of Willsword, who play no active role in the gameplay.

The story, relayed in the Steam description, hinges on a technological arms race. Advances in radar have nullified traditional stealth technology, leading Willsword to develop the XF-98 fighter, notable for its “MD Armor.” This armor is a classic piece of sci-fi technobabble, a system that “weakens enemy missiles by irradiating them with high power laser and EMP.” This innovation supposedly reduces the aircraft’s radar performance, a curious trade-off. The culmination of this program is the “XF-99 Artemis,” an “ultimate invincible fighter” feared as a “Fortress in the air.”

Yet, paradoxically, the player is not placed in the cockpit of this ultimate weapon. The Version 2.00 update changed the player’s craft to the “XF-97 prototype,” an earlier and presumably less advanced model. This disconnection between the lore and the gameplay is the first and most telling sign of the narrative’s lack of importance. The plot exists only to provide a vague reason for why you are shooting down generic UAVs and “Ace Pilots.”

Characters and Themes
There are no characters. There is no dialogue. There is only the mission text, which is presented with a charmingly awkward translation from its original Japanese:
* “Level 1: Maxell The federal UAVs are violating our airspace. Board the XF-97 prototype and make a sortie.”
* “Level 3: They are transporting supplies for war by AC-130. They will give up war if the supplies are gone.”

The themes are the standard, uncontroversial staples of the genre: technological superiority, national conflict, and military deterrence through force. It lacks any introspection or critique, functioning purely as set dressing for the action. The narrative is the absolute minimum required to proceed from one level to the next.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

This is the core of Air Combat XF, and it is where the game’s mixed reception is most clearly earned.

Core Loop and Controls
The gameplay loop is simple: select a level, take off, destroy all designated targets, and land (though the landing requirement is unclear from available materials). The game offers a first-person cockpit view and a third-person “behind view,” switchable with the C key.

The control scheme is a hybrid of mouse and keyboard:
* Mouse: Controls pitch and roll. Community discussions highlight issues with mouse sensitivity, with players asking developers for ways to “improve mouse speed” or add an “invert Y-axis setting.”
* W/S: Throttle control for speed up/down.
* A/D: Controls yaw, shifting the aircraft left and right.
* Left Click: Fires current weapon.
* Right Click: Switches between machine guns and missiles.

This control scheme is often cited as a primary point of contention. The reliance on the mouse for primary aircraft movement feels imprecise and floaty, a far cry from the “nearer to the real airplane” experience promised in some external metadata. The physics are arcade-like, but lack the satisfying weight and feedback of classics in the genre.

Combat and Progression
Combat is straightforward. Enemy UAVs, fighters, and transport planes fly in predictable patterns. Locking on and firing missiles or spraying with machine guns is functional but lacks impact. There is no discernible damage model on enemy aircraft; they simply explode after absorbing a set number of hits.

There is no character or aircraft progression system. The game is a score-attack experience at its heart, with a Steam Leaderboard that tracks “total score until the player is destroyed.” The version 2.00 update added six levels: three primary missions and two “extra” stages focused on hunting down the enemy’s ace pilots. With only five Steam Achievements, each tied simply to completing these levels, the game offers minimal incentive for replayability beyond chasing a higher score.

UI and Flawed Systems
The user interface is sparse and utilitarian. The most telling detail from the source material is a note on the startup screen: “Changing the graphics quality on the startup screen may make the sensitivity of the mouse optimal.” This is an astonishing admission—that a graphical setting is tied to input sensitivity—and it speaks volumes about the underlying technical jank that players must contend with. It is a system that is not just flawed, but fundamentally unstable.

World-Building, Art & Sound

The aesthetic of Air Combat XF is its most transparent element, a clear reflection of its asset-store origins.

Visual Direction and Atmosphere
The game’s visuals are a mosaic of purchased assets. The 3D models for aircraft and environments are competent but generic, lacking a consistent artistic direction. The skyboxes are simple, and the world below feels static and devoid of life. This is not a world you believe in; it is a playground constructed from off-the-shelf parts. The use of AI in generating the package image and part of the logo, as disclosed by the developers, is a fitting symbol for the game’s overall approach: a surface-level composition that masks a lack of original artistic core.

Sound Design
The sound design is functional. The roar of jet engines, the rattle of machine guns, and the explosions are all standard fare. The Version 2.00 update replaced the music with a new score composed by “NS.” The quality of this soundtrack is unknown due to a lack of available footage, but its existence shows an effort to improve the product’s atmosphere post-launch.

The overall experience is one of sterility. There is no sense of awe, danger, or excitement that defines great flight action games. The atmosphere is purely transactional: you are in an arena to complete objectives.

Reception & Legacy

Critical and Commercial Reception
Air Combat XF was met with a resounding silence from professional critics. No major publications reviewed it, and it holds a “n/a” Moby Score on MobyGames due to a complete lack of approved critic reviews.

Its player reception, however, is quantifiably “Mixed.” On Steam, it holds a rating of 48% positive out of 25 reviews, which aggregates to a “Mixed” overall rating. Steambase.io calculates a Player Score of 45/100 based on 31 total reviews. The community discourse is minimal, with only a handful of threads on the Steam forum, mostly concerning control issues and the extra levels.

Commercially, it is an obscurity. With only 102 owners tracked by completionist.me (including hidden profiles), it clearly failed to find any significant audience. It exists primarily as part of larger Sonic-Alpha bundles on Steam.

Evolution of Reputation and Influence
The reputation of Air Combat XF has not evolved because it never had one to begin with. It is a footnote, a piece of trivia. Its legacy is non-existent. It did not influence the genre or pave the way for new ideas. Instead, it serves as a perfect example of a specific type of Steam game: the low-budget, asset-flip adjacent title that floods the market. It is a game that represents the end result of accessible development tools without a strong, guiding creative vision.

Conclusion

Air Combat XF is not a good game by any conventional critical measure. Its gameplay is janky, its narrative is an afterthought, its world is sterile, and its technical execution is questionable. It is a product that feels rushed and assembled rather than designed and crafted.

However, to dismiss it entirely would be to ignore its value as a historical artifact. It is a fascinating snapshot of the indie game ecosystem in the late 2010s—a time when the barriers to entry were lower than ever, leading to both brilliant innovations and a deluge of forgettable content. It represents the end of the line for a certain development philosophy.

The final, definitive verdict on Air Combat XF is that it is a curiosity, not a classic. It is a game for the most dedicated video game archaeologists, those who seek to understand the full spectrum of what constitutes a “video game,” from the landmark titles that define generations to the obscure, flawed, and forgotten skirmishes like this one. It is a game that proudly declares, “Note that this game is just an arcade game,” and in doing so, provides its own most accurate review. It is just a game. And not a particularly memorable one at that.