Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

Stealth throws you into the cockpit of a high-tech reconnaissance plane, high above a foreboding landscape. Your primary objective is to traverse a 9,999-meter distance toward the ominous Tower of Darkness, deploying sneaky tactics and precise strikes to weaken enemy defenses before engaging the main target. From the very start, the game emphasizes a balance between aggression and caution: blast enemy radar arrays and bunkers for points, but remain hidden enough to avoid incoming fire and large-scale retaliations.

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Fuel management adds a strategic layer to every mission. Scattered across the terrain are yellow energy fields that replenish your fuel reserves—an essential resource for sustained flight and evasive maneuvers. However, not all energy fields are benevolent. Red fields carry a hazardous charge that can cripple your systems or cause a catastrophic shutdown mid-air, forcing you to constantly scan the environment for safe refueling spots. Timing your dives to grab yellow fields while evading anti-air fire becomes a nail-biting dance.

Upon destroying the Tower of Darkness, you’re thrust into a progressively tougher stage that retains the core mechanics but escalates enemy density and defensive layouts. You’ll confront overlapping radar nets, fortified bunkers, and more aggressive anti-air battery placements. This looping structure ensures that mastery of your stealth and targeting systems is always put to the test, keeping the gameplay compelling well past the first successful run.

Graphics

Visually, Stealth delivers a moody, almost cinematic experience. The ground below is rendered in muted tones of browns and grays, evoking a war-torn landscape. Skyscraping mountains, jagged rock formations, and ruined battlements stretch beneath your wings, offering a dramatic backdrop to each engagement. Tower of Darkness itself cuts a stark silhouette against an overcast sky—a fittingly menacing centerpiece for the game’s main objective.

The stealth plane model features clean lines and subtle texturing that hint at advanced materials and futuristic tech. Exhaust plumes and afterburner trails are rendered with bloom and motion blur, enhancing the sensation of speed during low-altitude runs. While the particle effects on explosions could stand to benefit from a bit more variety, each bunker or radar you destroy erupts in satisfying bursts of debris and flame.

The energy fields are mapped to bright, neon colors for instant recognition. Yellow fields glow with an almost jubilant brilliance, encouraging you to swoop in for that vital fuel top-up. In contrast, red fields pulse ominously, their jagged edges and flickering shadows warning of the risk you’d take by touching them. This clear, color-coded approach keeps your eyes focused on what matters most during high-speed sorties.

Story

Stealth opts for a minimalist narrative, letting the gameplay take center stage. The premise is simple: a rogue organization erects a Tower of Darkness to establish dominion over a ravaged land, and your mission is to thwart their ambitions. There’s no cutscene marathon or extended dialogue trees—just the urgent hum of your engines and the distant rumble of enemy defenses.

Despite its brevity, the storyline gains depth through environmental storytelling. Ruined villages, charred forests, and abandoned enemy outposts hint at the desperate struggle that’s already taken place. You become part of that ongoing conflict, with each destroyed radar representing another blow struck for freedom. It’s an economical approach that respects your time while still framing the action with a sense of purpose.

As you clear successive towers and face new configurations of defenses, a subtle narrative thread emerges: the enemy learns from your tactics, reorganizing their forces to anticipate your next move. This gives the game a sense of reactive intelligence, as though the dark forces behind each tower are studying your every engagement. In the absence of traditional cutscenes, this evolving challenge serves as the story’s driving force.

Overall Experience

Stealth delivers a sleek, high-tension flight combat experience that rewards careful planning as much as accurate shooting. The reactor-like glow of energy fields, the mechanical whine of your plane’s stealth systems, and the thunderous booms of bunker breaches all combine into a cohesive sensory package. It’s easy to lose track of time as you plot your flight path, weave through anti-air chokepoints, and pick off key installations.

That said, the game’s repetitive loop—destroy tower, advance to next level, rinse and repeat—might leave players craving more variety over extended play sessions. The core mechanics remain solid throughout, but additional mission objectives, dynamic weather effects, or branching path choices could elevate the long-term replay value. For now, the challenge lies in pushing deeper into enemy territory and seeing how far your skills will carry you.

If you’re after a no-frills, action-packed airborne stealth simulator with tight controls and a distinct aesthetic, Stealth is worth your attention. It excels at creating tense moments of near-miss evasion and exhilarating strike runs, all without drowning you in extraneous story beats. For fans of focused, mechanically rich flight games, the Tower of Darkness awaits—if you have the nerve to dive in.

Retro Replay Score

null/10