Canvas Aces

TK OPTIMA-S LLC

About this game

Canvas Aces puts you in the open cockpit of a Great War biplane, and the whole game is drawn like a photograph that has been sitting in a drawer since 1917 -- sepia, linen weave, and a smoke trail that hangs behind you long after you have turned.

The flight model is arcade but it has weight. Pull too hard and you stall, dive to build speed and the loop comes back, and the Immelmann turn that gets you behind an enemy fighter is a manoeuvre you learn rather than a button you press. Machine guns fire in bursts, not streams, which means picking the moment instead of holding down the trigger.

The front is a map of sectors, and each one asks for something different: zeppelins that need patient passes at the gasbag, fighter wings that need turn-fighting, escorts that punish you for chasing kills.

The hangar is where a campaign accumulates. Engine, guns and wing strength all trade against each other -- a heavier engine climbs but turns like a barn door -- and a career screen keeps your kills and your medals.

Canvas Aces is fully offline. No account, no purchases, no ads over the trenches. Just wind, a wooden airframe and a zeppelin on the horizon.