As an enormous fan of games featuring aerial combat and clever theming, on paper House Fighters looks like a pretty solid deal. Flying your toy plane around the house, dodging through different everyday items while locking horns with some enemies, there’s no doubt the idea has some appeal. The question is whether Total Mess is able to deliver that concept in a way that lives up to the idea’s potential. While they’re at least on the right track, I’d say the experience still has some flaws that can make it aggravating and underwhelming at times.

The concept isn’t a bad one at all, mixing together some flying and dogfighting action with a little bit of Small Soldiers or Honey, I Shrunk the Kids depending on your point of reference. You’ll be assigned your mission, and then work to execute it the best you can, usually flying into a new area, looking to take out any enemy units, and then finding or collecting different elements needed to complete your objectives. As you progress you’ll get access to different planes, with some minor differences in performance, some new paint and appearance options, and some different weapons as well. Then, you’ll periodically get to test your skills by taking on the equivalent of a boss battle, working to take down a particularly tough opponent using whatever means are available.

The problem is that not everything works very well. The controls are workable for the most part, but in some areas there are absolutely some problems. In particular, I struggled once just to open a door with a key I’d found because it turns out I needed to treat that single key like a different weapon, something I didn’t see explained and that just had me pressing every button to get by when I could just as easily have activated the door to unlock it when I got close to it. Another mission tripped me up, referring to me breaking a flower pot, only to fly around confused about which one it wanted me to shoot since there were quite a lot of them around. It turns out I needed to break an empty one nearby, which the game referred to as a clay pot after I’d shot it… I just wish it had called it that in the first place and saved the confusion. Add in that some of the alternative weapons are a bit of a pain to use and control, and that the game completely disregards physics as you’ll slow to a crawl mid-air without losing altitude as if you were just driving on a road, and it has some odd quirks. If you’re willing and able to put aside these areas that simply should have been handled better you could have some fun, but they do make it somewhat difficult to recommend.