There is a good chance that Couch Planes will ruin at least one friendship during game nights. Imagine Mario Kart, but everyone is flying planes, avoiding tornadoes, launching homing missiles and trying not to end up stuck in a mountain while the screen is on fire from explosions and power-ups.
Couch Planes is an arcade airborne party game focused on multiplayer chaos, fast racing, and sabotaging friends. You can play solo, locally on split-screen, or online with up to 12 players, and the game even supports a combination of local and online multiplayer, which is a dangerous combination for game night with friends.
During races, you pop balloons in the air to get power-ups like homing projectiles, speed boosts, and mines that literally turn the race into an aerial war crime. The best part is that the items are balanced depending on your position, so the races remain unpredictable.
The game comes with 15 handcrafted maps full of environmental hazards like tornadoes, rock collapses, windmills that drop power-ups, and huge trains passing through the map while you try to stay alive for another five seconds.
The controls are designed so that anyone can learn them in a few minutes, but the developer emphasizes that the real skill ceiling comes later. Barrel rolls, drifting, flips, and various stunt maneuvers act as the difference between “I’m playing casually with the crew” and “I turned game night into an esports tournament.”
In addition to standard races, Couch Planes also plans additional modes, seasonal events, a ranked ladder system, and a bunch of cosmetics like skins, trails, and effects. Fortunately, everything is purely cosmetic, so the game remains skill-based without any pay-to-win nonsense.
And honestly, it seems like one of those games that you start playing “just one round,” and end up playing until 3 AM while arguing about who hit whom with a missile just before the end.
Couch Planes playtest has an open playtest that you can sign up for on the Steam page.
