Airframe Ultra is looking to be the good kind of multiplayer game: No engagement hacking or battle passes—you pay once, but it has lasting value and, depending on its success at launch, dev support. There’s no ranked play, but it’s still a game with competitive depth and mechanics to master.
When I sat down to play it with developers from Videocult and staff from publisher Akupara Games, they made it clear that having as little in the way between the start menu and the beginning of a race was a development priority.
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Similar to our 2024 FPS of the year, Straftat, or last year’s Battlefield 6 it’s substantial competitive multiplayer for people who don’t want their brain chemistry manipulated to keep them playing.
But Airframe Ultra is not a shooter, it’s a hoverbike racing game with a ton of weird, neat quirks and complexity under the hood. You can dismount your bike at any time, trading its smooth, confident movement for your little biker dude’s deliberately weighty, QWOP-y shuffle.
You’re mainly allowed to do this because every race ends in a brawl. Airframe Ultra’s tracks are broken up with wide arenas where you’re expected to dismount, kill your opponents, then hop back on your bike and keep racing when the timer’s up. You get points for knocking out other players and winning individual legs of the race. The highest score at the end of the course (or whatever ending condition you set for your lobby) wins.
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The dismount feature does have another delightful wrinkle for those of us who spent recess observing roly poly bugs in the dirt: You can just chill out and explore the maps on foot, and the game will let you (at least until you get mercy-teleported to the next arena).
I live for this type of thing: A fast-paced racing game has no reason not to just throw up an invisible wall and tell you to get back to it, and it speaks to how intricately designed these maps are that you can slow down, smell the roses, and have a good time doing it.
Rain World co-creator James Primate quipped that it’s “Fall Guys with iron pipes,” but since I never played Fall Guys, I was reminded more of Smash Bros. during the brawls. I’m not talking “Fox only, Final Destination,” more “It’s your cousin’s birthday and we’ve got items on with the max number of players on Hyrule Temple.”
There are weapons and power ups scattered on the track and in the arenas, with a tasty, anarchic variety to the arsenal. I was having trouble doing real work with the guns, but the melee weapons are extremely satisfying. My favorite was a traffic sign you can use as a jousting lance, both on foot and in a vehicle.
It’s pure chaos in action. I felt like a proverbial youngest cousin getting broken on the wheel in Smash Bros. at his own birthday party, but Airframe Ultra feels fair and, crucially, mechanically rich. This is a game with advanced movement to master—you can get some serious air with the hoverbikes, which move slower than you’d expect, but with superb handling. I can imagine a fighting game tourney guy describing it as having “tech.” This is a very good thing.
Airframe Ultra already has Lore to its cyberpunk world, but the game’s still all about competitive multiplayer: Bot matches sound like the full extent of singleplayer support for the final game. After the desolate (or “mopey sad,” to quote Primate) Rain World, Videocult was ready to make something “loud and dumb and fast.”
It’s succeeding by my reckoning of the demo, but it’s definitely a lot smarter than that quote makes it sound. Airframe Ultra does not have a set release date, but you can wishlist it and check out its multiplayer-enabled demo in the Steam Next Fest.
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