SAND HAWK

Get in the helicopter. Complete the mission. Get home alive.

You have a wingman, two scouts and a transport.

That is the entire air wing, and none of it respawns.

Somewhere below you there is a compound that needs levelling, a downed pilot waving a smoke grenade, a convoy that has to reach the wall by dusk, and a village that raiders visit every few minutes whether you are watching or not.

You have a chain gun, a rack of missiles, a pod of rockets, and enough fuel to make some of that somebody else's problem.

Sand Hawk is an isometric helicopter action game in the spirit of the great arcade combat games of the early nineties — built out with the systems those games never had.

THE SECTOR DOES NOT WAIT FOR YOU

Lorries run the roads. Transports ferry sections between compounds. Soldiers walk out of barracks and back again. An old man moves his flock across open ground a kilometre from a firefight he has no part in.

Ground battles start without you and finish without you.

Fly away from one and it resolves badly. Spend ninety seconds of cannon on the right end of it and it resolves your way.

That is the trade the whole game is built on:

Infantry take minutes to cross ground you cross in seconds.

They cannot break a dug-in position on their own.

You can be anywhere.

You just cannot be everywhere.

And you cannot hold the ground once you have cleared it.

NOT EVERY MISSION IS "DESTROY EVERYTHING"

Some sectors hand you a target list and mean it.

Others do not care what you destroy at all.

The tankers have to reach open water.

The hostages have to come out.

The agent has to come off that roof.

The ground has to still be flying your flag when the clock stops.

Levelling the map will not win those, and working out which kind of sortie you are on is half of flying it well.

GET OUT AND WALK

Put her down.

Climb out.

Go in on foot with a carbine.

Take a jeep off somebody who is no longer using it.

Drive a whole column yourself while your gunship sits on the apron, and find out how the sector looks from two metres up instead of thirty.

THINGS THAT SHOOT BACK, AND THINGS THAT HIDE

You will face:

• Trenches with men dug into them, taking a fraction of normal damage and refusing to leave the hole.
• AA guns that lead your movement.
• SAM batteries that need time to set up before firing and can be caught doing it.
• Gunships and jets, when somebody decides you are worth the sortie.
• Smoke screens that can turn a simple objective into a problem.

And then there are the tyre pits.

Every compound has them: scrapes stacked with lorry tyres, with a jerrican beside each one.

When they hear rotors, somebody runs out and lights them.

Ninety seconds later there is a column of oily black smoke standing over the objective that neither of you can see through.

It is a real tactic, and it works on you exactly as well as it works on them.

Kill the man carrying the can.

Fly around it.

Or wait.

WHAT YOU CAN CALL IN

Fire missions

You get two fire missions per sortie.

Mark a point, wait seven seconds, and something well out of sight puts nine shells across it.

That is the whole argument settled.

But you only get two.

There is a delay before you can call the second, and once they are gone, they are gone.

Spending one on a truck is a decision you may regret at the far end of the map.

Call the bus

Break enough of a garrison and men start putting their hands up.

Pop a marker over them and the rescue helicopter comes out and collects them.

That is worth more than killing them was.

The same helicopter comes for a downed pilot, yours, your wingman's, or anybody else's as soon as the ground around them is clear enough to land.

Mark a target for the ground

Put your nose on something and a section is mounted, driven out, and put onto it while you go and do something else.

You get three of those.

They come back slowly.

Choosing which of the four things you can see is worth committing a section to is most of what makes them interesting.

THE REST OF THE WING

You are not up there alone.

And that is the point of it.

Everything you have is finite.

Two little birds work the sector and will divert to anything you mark.

A transport carries sections to the flags you take.

A rescue helicopter comes for anyone on the ground with smoke out.

Shoot the transport down and the compounds you capture stay empty for the rest of the sortie, because nothing is left that can put men on them.

Lose both scouts and nobody is coming when you call.

Hawk Two

Hawk Two flies with you, takes orders, and gets hurt.

Ask how he is doing and he tells you what his armour actually is, not a line of flavour text.

Shoot him down and he comes out on his chute, pops his own smoke, and waits.

Pull him out and he flies again next sortie.

Leave him behind and the roster remembers.

BETWEEN SORTIES

The campaign includes:

• 20 sectors
• 2 standalone classic maps
• Persistent campaign progress
• High scores
• Ranks
• Decorations
• A squadron roster with named pilots
• Equipment upgrades

Credits earned in the field can be spent on:

• Composite armour
• Long-range fuel tanks
• Missile racks
• Rocket pods

What survives the sortie matters.

CONTROLS

Keyboard or gamepad.

There is no mouse aiming — the helicopter turns where you fly it.

Keyboard

WASD — Fly Space — Gun X — Missile Z — Rockets E — Enter / Exit L — Land C — Fly low F — Smoke G — Wingman command T — Mark target B — Fire mission M — Map Esc — Pause

Gamepad

Left Stick — Fly Movement is analogue: half stick means half speed.

A — Gun X — Missile B — Rockets Triggers — Weapon controls Start — Pause

The control hints along the bottom of the screen automatically follow whichever input method you are using.

PLATFORMS

Windows 64-bit Linux 64-bit

Each version is self-contained.

No installer.

Nothing to configure.

Campaign progress, high scores, and settings are saved per user.

EARLY ACCESS

Sand Hawk is currently in Early Access.

The core game is playable, but development is ongoing.

Expect continued improvements to:

• Missions
• Enemies
• Balancing
• Visuals
• Effects
• Environments
• Controls
• Audio
• Campaign systems
• Overall polish

Feedback, bug reports, and suggestions are welcome.

INSPIRED BY THE CLASSICS

Sand Hawk owes an obvious debt to the isometric helicopter games of the early nineties, and it is not trying to hide that.

It is not trying to be one of them either.

It shares no code, art, audio, characters, or names with those games.

The goal is to take the feeling those games had and build something around it that they could not do at the time:

a living combat sector that carries on when you are not looking.

Get in the helicopter.

Complete the mission.

Get home alive.