Developed by Rockodile, ‘Death From Above’ is an arcade-style, drone sim set during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Your objective is to take control of your drone and give back the freedom and safety of the Ukrainian people. You are tasked with taking down military personnel and their operations using a few different explosives and your drone flying skills.

A short experience and it has little on offer game and story-wise. You are greeted with a small cutscene and a bit of dialogue to set the story which seemed interesting at first. After you begin your journey however there’s not a whole lot of context with what’s going on. It’s as simple as going here, clearing out the enemies, taking control, and moving on. Before I knew it, it was over in around 30 short minutes.

After this, you are greeted with another short cutscene and a bit of dialogue to close off the story, followed by a scoreboard of other players and their scores. This is where the main point of the gameplay itself becomes a bit more interesting. After feeling empty from very minimal story content, time to compete on the scoreboard, and aim for that top score is your only drive to keep going.

Scoring is quite simple, killing enemies, destroying vehicles, and completing objectives are your main ways of earning points. Doing multi-kills or killing frequently will net you some bonus points, and for some extras, there are some collectibles to fly your drone into for a nice little bonus. If you want to reach those high scores, make sure you explore off the beaten track, there are a few extra compounds around for you to take out. This was quite possibly the only enjoyment I got out of Death From Above.

Flying your drone is quite a simple task, not much like flying a real drone. Controlling it is really easy, and pretty standard, forward and back, side to side and up and down, not a lot to it, just be sure to pay attention to its health.

Armed with two options for explosives, grenades, and anti-tank, which you have to return to the character to restock or change out. In order to use these you enter a bombing mode via a camera on the bottom of the drone, and if you are having trouble tracking and finding targets it is equipped with a thermal mode.

Graphically, there’s nothing special going on, no real flare or glaring uniqueness. Coming with a few colour styles for your drone and character is a nice little touch as that’s what you’ll be looking at the most. The world felt bleak and boring though, offering minimal to explore as it all looked the same almost everywhere you went. Variety in the environments would really assist the overall appeal of this title.

Unfortunately, the sound design doesn’t offer much either. The only notable sounds are your explosions, drone propellers as you ramp up speed, enemies shouting random lines in Russian and random music playing on the radio loudly as you reach some areas. The song in the main menu though, I could definitely vibe with that.

On reflection at the end of the experience; all in all the message, awareness, and cause Rockodile and Lesser Evil are sending across is great. As for the game itself, it feels more like a side mission set in what I feel is a boring and bleak setting of what could be a bigger overall picture. Being in early access though I can only hope they improve on what they got and turn it into a possibly decent title.

Written by: MrVibeAU