Smoke Wallace is the type of character I could see hung-up on a young Black child’s bedroom walls for years. He got bit by a radioactive dragon and not only survived, but gained the ability to shoot bullets out of his fingers. He jumps out of airplanes with mercenaries he knows are itching to put a bullet in him the first chance they get. He goes shot for shot with dragons and parachuting tanks mid-air, all while dodging floating islands that promise immediate death should he be unlucky or ungraceful enough to crash into one. He has a persistent rival who challenges him to races only to lose despite consistent tech upgrades. He talks to a magic cow. Simply put, Smoke Wallace is That Guy. 

Much of Aerial_Knight’s DropShot feels like it’s aimed toward cementing that feeling. Each level has you, as Smoke Wallace, free fall toward a finish line as fast as you can. With a score and ranking awaiting you after each level, you’ll fight and race enemies while collecting coins and dodging debris along the way. Outside of this already sick premise, several small things elevate it to a distinctly cool experience. Each run of falling to the ground and shooting anything that breathes ends with a freeze frame of Wallace mid-pose. The voice lines carry a tone and energy not so dissimilar from what you’d find in a shonen anime. The animations that play before a run starts reach Piccolo-levels of aura farming. And then, there’s the Finger Gun. 

Finger guns have been the signature move of the most uncool try-hards of countless shows and movies. Finger guns get you the last invitation to the party, if you’re even invited after whipping out the skin pistols from their imaginary holsters. But the Finger Gun in DropShot gained more “Hell yeah!”s from me than groans. Its implementation avoids corny territory by simply being an efficient, purple dispatcher of mercenaries that carries some weight to it when fired. Its presence on-screen, alongside sick tattoos and well-manicured nails, never gets old and further realizes Smoke Wallace as his own man rather than a simple extension of the player. 

It also helps that players don’t need to be very precise when aiming, as the cursor on-screen will signal when an object is in range for you to fire a new hole into it. Given how fast Wallace can get, it’s a decision that focuses the player’s attention on what’s important (see: avoiding lethal debris and mercs that shoot back) rather than asking them to juggle too many tasks in the air by making aim a significant lift.

The choice of a finger gun only becomes more interesting when put into further context. As game director Neil Jones shared with Kotaku, he not only wanted to subvert FPS titles but also avoid creating “another piece of media with a Black leading man armed with a gun.” While I’m personally not against portraying an armed Black man depending on the story, the choice is understandable given that pop culture has traditionally used the combination to push negative stereotypes of Black people as inherently violent. It’s a refreshing twist that ends up making Smoke Wallace cooler without sacrificing the impact of shooting in an FPS game.

Wallace’s That Guy factor is assisted by the way DropShot raises the stakes during his skydives. By limiting the number of bullets available at a given time, in addition to a reload mechanic that requires Wallace shoot or punch floating balloons, levels often feel like an adrenaline rush that only an experienced badass could survive. When the game’s best pieces are working in tandem, it creates an action-packed, high score-chasing experience with the confidence of its main character.

What becomes less thrilling are some of the elements surrounding Smoke Wallace — for instance, the dragon eggs. Despite how awesome gaining a power-up from cracking a mystical beast’s shell should be, the abilities often felt unnecessary, sometimes even tension-killing. While things like combustible rubber ducks, speed-boosting dragons, and six Finger Guns are exciting in theory and cool to look at, their execution lands more disruptive to the game’s flow — at least, this is what I would’ve said initially.

An update after my completion of DropShot has seemingly done away with the above power-ups. After replaying multiple levels, it seems that the aforementioned abilities have been substituted with a single ability to shoot multiple things within a briefly widened cursor using one bullet. While still not incredibly different from the base Finger Gun, it does a better job of maintaining momentum than the previous power-ups.

There’s also the matter of the levels themselves. Despite the clever ways they ensure players actually consider their approach to the ground through the placement of slipstreams and lasers, they can vary somewhat drastically in enjoyment. As a result, over DropShot’s 50 levels, runs range from thrill rides where landing on the ground with a good ranking tastes like sweet victory to rollercoasters without enough turns or loops. Fortunately, levels skew more the former than the latter, but it leaves an overall sense of uneven pacing. Also, one batch of later levels create a constant sense of déjà vu as they are difficult to tell apart. More than once I thought I had accidentally started the same level again. 

However, none of these issues grated me too much given how short DropShot is. Without factoring in the Endless Mode that’s unlocked once every level is completed, the entire game can be finished within an evening. In another world where skimming the indie section of a console’s storefront didn’t take an entire afternoon in of itself, I could imagine someone seeing this game’s sick art, trying it on a whim, and finishing the same day with a strong enough “One more level” attitude. Anyone who reaches credits will also find a touching memorial to Daniel Wilkins, a game developer, composer, and long-time friend of Neil Jones who passed away in 2024. Wilkins played an important role in conceiving DropShot, so it only makes sense that Smoke Wallace would take some time to visit him once all the mercenaries and dragons are handled. 

While the overall experience gets bumpy because of how smooth it can be, DropShot is still the kind of arcade-y game that’s hard to regret losing a few hours to. With a style that makes free falling and shooting mercenaries feel like an action blockbuster, plus a Finger Gun that’s snappy and never gets old to use, playing as Smoke Wallace will make you feel like a badass protagonist who always lands on his feet.

DropShot was reviewed on PC with a code provided by the developer.