DaRmaZat While space combat simulators have always had a loyal following, dystopian dogfighters remain a surprisingly rare breed. Developer Reakktor Studios and publisher Senatis aim to bridge that gap with G-Rebels. Having launched into Steam Early Access on July 20, this action-focused flight sim attempts to merge open-world exploration with tactical aerial combat. Notably, the game launches with support for both standard and VR modes, though this preview coverage was conducted exclusively in non-VR mode.
Set in the year 2684 following catastrophic global flooding, humanity’s survivors reside in massive floating megacities competing for remaining natural resources. Within this flooded world, you step into the cockpit of an experimental X-Type Skyblade as an Okktane Agent. Your journey begins high above the towering skyscrapers of Daevos – the first of many planned districts set to be introduced throughout Early Access – where your initial directive is maintaining law and order alongside your partner, Cartner, who flies his own ship to help you learn the ropes during the tutorial missions.
Once those introductory tasks are wrapped up, you are largely left to defend the skies on your own. From there, the vast 12,000-square-kilometer world opens up into a sandbox where you use your Skyblade to carve out your own path, all while a sinister conspiracy forces you to question your allegiance. To upgrade your ship and survive among the outposts, research centers, and industrial hubs, you gradually take on work as a bounty hunter, mercenary, racing pilot, or artifact seeker.
Navigating this vast sky-scape requires opening a sector map to select destination waypoints, where you must fly through designated yellow markers to initiate tasks. Keep in mind that opening the sector map doesn’t pause the game. Enemies and environmental hazards keep moving in the background, so it’s best to find a safe spot to park before planning your flight path to avoid taking unseen hull damage.
G-Rebels‘s core gameplay loop in its current Early Access state follows a relatively straightforward structure. You accept available contracts at designated mission waypoints, head toward the specified target area, use your ship’s Delta Scanner to locate hostiles, and eliminate them using primary weapons or guided missiles to collect your reward. Earned credits can then be spent at skyscraper hangars on various offense, defense, engine, and peripheral upgrades.
While functional, this mission loop currently lacks structural variety and polish, as objectives quickly begin to feel repetitive. Furthermore, narrative radio dialogues repeat their instructions incessantly if you linger in a mission area while trying to explore. Replacing these pushy voice triggers with subtle, opt-in map markers would significantly improve the overall pacing and reduce friction during free-flight exploration.
Regardless of which of the four difficulty settings you select, it is the imprecise handling itself that will give you the hardest time. Playing with a controller feels remarkably floaty and imprecise due to the absence of sensitivity tuning sliders. Precise mechanics – such as time-trial missions or painting targets with the Delta Scanner – feel excessively frustrating on a gamepad as well.
Switching to a mouse and keyboard vastly improves aiming precision and flight control, though doing so reveals a UI quirk where button prompts remain stuck on controller icons if a gamepad was previously connected. Flight sim enthusiasts should also note that there is currently no out-of-the-box support for popular flight sticks like the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro, requiring a bit of a manual remapping hassle. There’s also no visual feedback when manually saving, though frequent autosaves thankfully keep your progress safe. Then again, ironing out those rough edges is exactly what Early Access is for.
Visually, the game offers a pleasant presentation with dynamic day-night cycles and volumetric weather, though certain elements like the overly straight undersides of cloud layers lack a true next-gen feel. On the performance front, having access to DLSS, FSR, and XeSS alongside TSR, FXAA, and TAA anti-aliasing is a welcome inclusion, offering a great way to push higher frame rates without sacrificing visual fidelity.
Preliminary Thoughts
G-Rebels establishes a familiar yet functional foundation for a dystopian aerial combat sim. The overarching narrative isn’t particularly gripping, and the flight controls desperately require sensitivity options and flight-stick refinement to be viable on anything other than a mouse and keyboard.
Nevertheless, the core loop of earning upgrades through mercenary contracts offers a decent starting point. Performance-wise, G-Rebels runs great, so the development team’s primary challenge moving forward should be polishing the flight mechanics, smoothing out the intrusive dialogue triggers, and adding meaningful variety to its sandbox activities. It will be interesting to see how this flying shooter evolves throughout its Early Access journey.
Additional Information
Release Date: July 20, 2026 (Early Access)
Previewed On: PC. Download code provided by the publisher and PR agency.
Developer: Reakktor Studios
Publisher: Senatis
Relevant links: Available via Steam.
