Cavatus

Cavatus is a side-scrolling game set in a 3D world. After the war against Professor Zor, technologies have been destroyed and only a few ancient flying machines remain. Zor may still be alive and could start another war, so you pilot a series of historical planes and airships through a vast, long-forgotten cave system to stop him.

Fly through the caves

Fuel is limited, your damage points are low and your starting weapons are simple. Avoid touching the cave floor, collect fuel and shields, and reach the next airport before you run out of fuel. Airports act as checkpoints: after completing a mission and landing at its specified airport, the game saves automatically. You have an infinite number of lives, but the difficulty rises as you progress, and powerful bosses test your flying and weapon skills.

The game uses physics for flight. Gravity and lift affect your aircraft, with lift occurring only above a certain speed. Your plane can drift, glide and crash depending on whether you accelerate. Collisions cause more damage at higher speeds, and hard landings damage your plane. You can collect machine-gun, bomb, protection and range upgrades, which your team installs at airports. You also earn points for kills, collected items and completing missions quickly.

Flying machines

You use different aircraft over the course of the game:

• Biplane: agile, economical and lightly armed.
• Airship: slow, able to fly backwards and glide, armed only with bombs and very vulnerable. It cannot land at airports.
• Fighter: fast, thirsty and well-armed.
• Bomber: very heavily armed, thirsty and sluggish in flight.
• Jet: very fast, thirsty and well- to very well-armed.