For its third title, developer Aerial_Knight Games leaves the freerunning exploits of its Never Yield duology and takes to the ground by way of the skies. Aerial_Knight’s DropShot puts the studio in shooter territory while keeping its distinct sense of style that makes this latest game stronger in concept than execution, but nonetheless charming.

Throughout the game’s 50 levels, you’re tasked with eliminating your enemies in midair after you all jump out of a plane. Freefall scenes were in many action games during the 2010s (including God of War 3 and Dead Space 2) and made popular again thanks to recent battle royales like Fortnite and Apex Legends. Whatever your frame of reference is, the setup here is simple: use your finger gun to shoot targets before they completely pass you by (or just punch them when you’re close enough), with help from the occasional explosive or magic dragon egg. You don’t have to shoot everyone to complete a level, but your score depends on how many you shoot, your remaining bullets, and the time it takes you to reach the designated drop zone.

On its face, it sounds like the easiest kind of shooter to go through, but the game throws various curveballs to keep things flavorful. You only have up to 10 bullets (which reload by attacking balloons), and with no ironsight aiming, a shot only lands when the reticle perfectly lines up. Like in the Never Yield series, forward momentum is the name of the game, so if you miss, you can’t turn completely around to try and shoot again. Crashing into fields littering the sky and slipstreams are also obstacles to avoid or dive into at a moment’s notice—the latter give you extra speed, but can easily cost you a target (or your own life) if you’re not careful.

Aerial_Knight’s DropShot doesn’t ask a lot of the player, but it does want them to get into a particular rhythm during the long fall down. In its best moments, popping off shots feels satisfying, especially when it’s just out of leaving a slipstream or before an enemy’s out of sight for good. And during a handful of boss fights against a dragon or tank they try to blast you out of the sky, you can feel the full vision come into focus. But when you miss something, it can be tough to figure out whether it’s your fault or the game’s. The distance between when shots will hit a target doesn’t feel strongly defined, and without slipstreams, your character’s fall will feel slower than it actually is.

The speed of your descent (or lack thereof) really comes through during a handful of races where you’re tasked with catching a dragon egg before it can be snatched by your enemy. In these combat-free segments, you fly through slipstreams and point multipliers to build up speed, but they don’t fully match the rest of the game or require much in the way of challenge beyond charting a mental course between the rings and tunnels. It never feels like the other racer is using different tactics from when you first meet them, and without any ways for either of you to sabotage each other, you could potentially forget they’re there entirely until one beats the other.

Where the gameplay is inconsistent, the vibes and aesthetic are frequently excellent. DropShot’s visuals and color palette give things a charm found in PlayStation 1 and 2 games and the sense that director Neil Jones cooked this up based on ideas from his youth. That’s most apparent in the game’s lead, Smoke Wallace, who gets his finger-gun powers after getting bitten by a radioactive dragon (as one does). Whether he’s jumping out of a plane or doing a victory pose at the end of a level, he just radiates the kind of cool you see from an OC whose creator is in love with them and wants everyone to know.

Equally winning is the game’s soundtrack, which gets you in the right mood to start dropping out of the plane and popping off shots. It’s the last music from composer Daniel Wilkins, who passed away in 2024. Jones and Wilkins were friends and collaborators for years—the latter did the Never Yield music, which gets a shoutout during the last string of levels—and they came up with the initial concept for this game. With a tribute to Wilkins at the end, Aerial_Knight’s DropShot can’t help but be the studio’s most personal game to date. Even when it’s not in top form, there’s an earned enthusiasm that lets it land successfully, even if it’s not a perfect one.

Aerial_Knight’s DropShot releases February 17 for PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X|S.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.