Airframe Ultra News

Hey Racers,

[h3]What do I do in Megacity West? I race.[/h3]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Airframe Ultra shredded in The MIX. They couldn’t keep up. If you want to see the full showcase back there, here is the link to that.

-riv otter

Hey Racers,

We just finished with another round of closed beta and I’m excited to recap what we had learned!

First off, I want to thank everyone who participated in the closed beta and took the time to report bugs and gave feedback on the build. If you would like to follow the news of Airframe Ultra, then I suggest joining the Airframe Ultra Discord. You might just get a hint of something new coming later this summer.

[h3]What we learned?[/h3]
This beta delivered on changes that players asked for in the January beta and uncovered some new pain points that we’ll be addressed in the future. In this recap, I’ll be covering all of it! The improvements, the detriments, and all the feedback from racers making friends and rivals along the way.

First, we added a few easy wins: the added settings for players to personalize their preferences was a great success. Players enjoyed the cops and even killed them in some cases. And the finishline win brought games to a more climactic end.

We definitely have some plans in place to change that third one: some exciting situations where players who dominated in the arenas struggled with closing out the game with a win.The Finishline Win means in order to win the game you need to reach the score to win and then, win a race. Good racers and good fighters should both have good access to winning the game and right now, it feels a bit tilted towards the former over the latter.

The beta introduced new maps that players could burn rubber on. Well, I guess, airframes don’t have tires to burn rubber but uhhh… you get the idea. From deep in the urbanized heart of Megacity West in Nightride to the man-made canyons of Quarry, there were a ton of fun games played. Players highlighted visibility on Nightride as an issue, which is something we’ll look to address in the future. And of course, there were still players who hung out on the warehouse map and chilled on the couch. That couch is about to be the most popular couch in gaming history.

We also introduced more movement tech for players when off their airframes. The community had a blast figuring them out and learning how to chain them together. In fact, I heard on the streets that a fight club popped up, only using these movements and no airframes. If you want to peek at this club here is a video from the community!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Also, I’ve also been tracking the community while they break the maps with shortcuts and ways to skip parts of the track. Fair warning! We may choose to close some of these shortcuts as bugs if we find them to be too disruptive to the competitive side of the game. This is a beta, after all, even if we do recognize the fun in finding cool ways to go out of bounds. If you want to view the movement tech and different skips the community has found, check out the community made Tech and Skips! Some amazing skips there.

[h3]Fan Art[/h3]
We love seeing the fan art made by the community and I want to end our beta weekend recap to share some of them!
Ellihunden on Discord


Brkojquag on Discord


Acidhydra101 on Discord


Thingamagic_and_co on Discord


Walleye_enlightenment on Discord


Seodoro on Discord!

[h3]PAX East[/h3]
Airframe Ultra was the second title we brought to PAX East! The team had a wonderful time hanging out with James and Joar, the developers at Videocult working on Airframe Ultra!

It was exciting to see people walking from all over taking a shot at Airframe Ultra.


Even if you missed PAX East, you can still check out the Airframe Ultra demo on Steam!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2522120/Airframe_Ultra/

-riv otter

We are starting the second beta on Friday which will last over the weekend! If you would like to join the beta then check out the Airframe Ultra Discord and fill out the Google Form to join!

If you played in the first beta, there are several changes made from the feedback of that beta to improve this round of beta testing! Even if you are new and want to check it out, your feedback is valuable and appreciated.

[h2]So What’s Actually New?[/h2]
Alright, alright. I’ll dive deep into some of the new mechanics and even a new map you’ll be able to check out during the beta! From new UI changes to new vehicle balance changes to new character customization options, there is a lot to talk about here.

[h2]New Racing Settings[/h2]


There will be some new settings for you to play with. If you played the first beta you may immediately see the new Finishline Win. The Finishline Win means in order to win the game you need to reach the score to win and then, win a race! The goal here is to increase the importance of being a strong racer and to make for more climactic finishes. It really puts a target on your back when you hit the score to win and the other players know they need to defeat you in order to keep their chances of victory alive. That is clearly the only new setting, nothing else. Nope there isn’t anything behind the red censor.

[h2]Balance Changes[/h2]
One take away from the first beta was that many people felt that melee weapons were severely underpowered and saw them as a waste of money against the many ranged options. The development team did give melee a bit of a nudge to improve their usefulness and we hope that players will see them as an option in combat!

The different Airframes also had some tweaks to their stats to better separate them and to give each their moments to shine. We found in the first beta that the meta was to play only one type of Airframe, the hopper, as its mobility and speed just completely outplayed the others. So, the hopper was adjusted to make it a bit less of the obvious choice. Some of the other Airframes got a slight bump like the cruiser being a bit more forgiving and in line with the other bikes and the vector to be a bit more… well, vector. Seriously, that is the note that Josh and Joar gave me for the vector.

[h2]Maps[/h2]
There will be new maps to play with in the new beta! Quarry and Nightride will be in this beta test!

Nightride is deep in the urbanized heart of Megacity West. Fight on the streets while dodging traffic. From the narrow backalleys of the night market to the wide freeway slicing through the sky over the city, there are nothing but buildings filling up the horizons in each direction you look. Show the other racers who truly own the streets.


Quarry sits nestled in the deep, man-made canyons of large abandoned mines in Megacity West’s rusted, industrial core. While the workers have left long ago, the conveyor belts still remain active, transporting materials to their destinations– could you ask for a better track of Airframe racers? Careful when racing in the valleys, those blocks of stone do not move if you crash into them.


There are a ton more new changes I could go into. However, that is for you to explore in the new beta! If you would like to join the beta, then fill out the Google Form!

- riv otter

Hey Racers,

Get your ass back on your airframes!

[h2]Sign ups for the second Airframe Ultra Beta are available now![/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

If you are interested in joining the beta and playing against your friends and rivals, then join the Airframe Ultra Discord for information on how to join!

This beta will include numerous new features and tweaks since the last beta! I’ll go into deeper details later.

- riv otter

In January, we hosted the first ever closed beta for Airframe Ultra and I was shocked by the amount of people and feedback we received from the community. While I was predicting somewhere around 500 to 700, we actually got over 1,800 people who joined the beta.

The community had a blast going through the tracks and knocking each other’s heads in with pipes, burning them up with molotov, and racing to get the most points! Most surprisingly were folks who actually got together and hung out in the sandbox warehouse map. It’s so neat and wholesome to see that the community could get together and just relax in the game about violence and racing.


The team is already hard at work after the closed beta absorbing and implementing the feedback and reviewing the different bugs reported from the community play testing. From crashing when rolling the airframe to some controller issues, we’re investigating these reports to resolve them. These issues may not have been discovered without keen eyes of the beta testers, so I do want to give a bit of a secret screenshot. For some accessibility, how about some sensitivity sliders and inverted X and Y axis controls? Don’t tell Buddy I’m showing you this.

The community discovered so many cool tech and skips while playing the beta. From shotgun-hopping to velocity storage to wall-kicking, there are tons of interactions they figured out in just over the weekend. They already have an Airframe Ultra Tech and Skips wiki set up to share the different tricks they have found! Maybe you can test these cool tricks in the demo of Airframe Ultra on Steam?

[h2]Fan Art[/h2]
The fan art! Oh boy the fan art that came from this was just amazing and so wonderful to see! I would love to highlight just a few of them but these for sure are not the only ones. If you want to check out more art pieces from the community, I would strongly recommend joining the Airframe Ultra Discord!

Drawn by mvsnake on Discord

First Cosplay by val.zip on Discord

Drawn by ohmanit on Discord

Drawn by 100_eels on Discord

Our marketing lead, Buddy, already revealed that there will be another closed beta for Airframe Ultra! While you’ll need to wait a little bit longer on when that will happen, I strongly recommend joining the Airframe Ultra Discord or following the Airframe Ultra Twitter and Bluesky to keep up with the game’s news and announcements!

- Riv Otter