Project Wingman

Project Wingman
Information
VR/AR	VR
Developer	Sector D2
Publisher	Humble Games (original); Balor Games (current Steam listing)
Platform	SteamVR, OpenXR, PlayStation VR2
Device	PC VR, PlayStation VR2
Operating System	Windows, PlayStation 5
Type	Game
Genre	Action, Simulation, Indie, Flight
Input Device	Gamepad, Keyboard, HOTAS
Play Area	Seated
Game Mode	Single-player
Release Date	1 December 2020 (PC); 3 October 2023 (PS5 and PS VR2, as Frontline 59)
Price	US$24.99 (Steam); US$29.99 (Frontline 59 on PlayStation Store); US$4.99 (Frontline-59 Campaign DLC on Steam)
App Store	Steam, GOG, PlayStation Store
Website	https://store.steampowered.com/app/895870/Project_Wingman/

See also: VR Apps and VR Games

Project Wingman is an arcade-style combat flight action game developed by Sector D2, an independent studio led by Perth-based developer Abi Rahmani, and co-published by Sector D2 and Humble Games. It was released for Windows on 1 December 2020 with optional virtual reality support for the whole game on PC headsets, and later came to Xbox consoles in October 2021 and to PlayStation 5 in October 2023 as Project Wingman: Frontline 59, an edition with six new missions playable on PlayStation VR2. The player flies as a mercenary pilot over an alternate history of Earth. The Steam store page describes the game as suited to players who are not looking for a simulator experience.

On PC, the entire game can be played in VR through SteamVR or the Oculus PC runtime, always from a cockpit view. On PlayStation 5 only the six Frontline 59 missions support PS VR2; the original campaign is played flat. The PC version holds a Metascore of 75, which Metacritic classes as "generally favorable".

Reviewed 6 October 2026. Steam store and developer news posts, Kickstarter figures, Unreal Dev Grant round, release dates and prices on Steam, PlayStation Store and Xbox, VR support details, Balor Games ownership change, and the PC Gamer, UploadVR, MIXED, Metacritic and OpenCritic statements and scores. About review dates.

Gameplay

Players fly fighter and attack aircraft over combat zones set in an alternate history of Earth, including the Bering Strait, the magma fields of Yellowstone and the redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest. Enemies include railgun emplacements, geothermal-powered weapons and large mechanized fortresses. The game has more than 20 aircraft and more than 40 weapons. In its review, PC Gamer counted 21 campaign missions and noted that the flight model is forgiving and arcade-like rather than a hardcore flight simulation.

The campaign follows a mercenary pilot with the callsign Monarch, who flies with two wingmen and an AWACS controller against an imperial power called the Federation. Because the team could not afford cutscenes, the story is told entirely in-game. The second single-player mode, Conquest, is a roguelike territory-capture mode. Players clear an overworld map area by area, earn credits to hire allied pilots during a run, and face a boss in each area. An Alert Level rises over time and makes enemy reinforcements stronger. Being shot down ends the run, and only Prestige Points carry over, which buy aircraft for later runs. Both modes support optional modifiers. The game has no multiplayer.

Controls are fully rebindable. Any gamepad, HOTAS or other device that Windows reads through DirectInput can be bound, and custom axis curves are supported.

Virtual reality

Sector D2 planned VR and peripheral support from the start of development. Before launch the studio described VR play as "a 1:1 experience with traditional players", except that a VR player is always limited to the cockpit view. The team tested virtual joysticks for motion controllers but did not take them past testing. The Steam store lists support for SteamVR, OpenXR and Oculus PC headsets, with keyboard or gamepad required and no motion controller support. TheGamer's report on the release date listed support for Oculus, Valve Index and HTC Vive headsets. One developer reported playing on a Windows Mixed Reality headset with an AMD Ryzen 5 2600, 16 GB of RAM and a GTX 1070, and stated that VR play needs a more powerful PC than flat play.

On PS VR2, the Frontline 59 missions use eye tracking to highlight targets, head tracking to look around the battlefield, and headset vibration during combat. The game does not support the PS VR2 Sense controllers and is played with the DualSense controller. The PlayStation Store lists PS VR2 as optional for the game.

Development

Abi Rahmani, known online as RB-D2, began work on Project Wingman in November 2015. His only earlier game project was a small Unreal Engine 4 prototype that grew into Project Wingman. He did most of the development himself, with help from volunteers and with London-based composer Jose Pavli writing the music. On 24 August 2017, Epic Games named Project Wingman from RB-D2 among 15 recipients of its Unreal Dev Grants, a round that awarded a total of US$204,000.

The game was funded on Kickstarter in a campaign run from 29 May to 3 July 2018. It raised AU$114,544.94 from 2,467 backers against a goal of AU$35,000. TheGamer described Sector D2 as a three-person team led by Rahmani. The release had first been aimed at summer 2020, then early 2021, before it was moved up to 1 December 2020. Final playtesting of version 0.9 was done by what the developers called a group of "20 something" pilots, playing both in VR and out of it.

After launch, Sector D2 said the first wave of problems involved hardware configurations, especially HOTAS, and VR, with SteamVR not working well on a minority of systems. The studio also reported that the game was the second best-selling game globally on the Steam charts shortly after launch. On 3 October 2023, the same day the PlayStation version launched, Sector D2 opened an opt-in Steam beta branch for "Platform Update 2.0", which overhauled the rendering and cloud systems. In the same announcement the studio said it planned to rework Conquest and the Mercenary difficulty mode, add aircraft, and make user-generated content such as custom skins and aircraft easier to integrate, while stating that it could make no promises about the latter.

Frontline 59

Frontline 59 is set during the main game's conflict and follows a reserve pilot of the Pacific Federation, in unit K-9, defending against a Cascadian invasion on the Magadan Front. Its six missions move from the Magadan coast and underground tunnels to the Arctic Circle, with a new soundtrack by Jose Pavli. MIXED reported that the six missions add about two to three hours of play.

Release

Platform	Release date	VR support	Notes
Windows (Steam, GOG, Humble Store)	1 December 2020	Full game on PC VR headsets	US$24.99 on Steam at launch
Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S	28 October 2021	None reported	Launched on Xbox Game Pass
PlayStation 5 (Frontline 59)	3 October 2023	Six Frontline 59 missions on PlayStation VR2 (optional)	US$29.99; includes the original campaign, which is flat only
Windows (Frontline-59 Campaign DLC on Steam)	1 December 2024	PC VR	US$4.99; requires the base game

UploadVR described the PlayStation 5 edition as a surprise launch and reported that only its six new missions supported PS VR2, which had not been disclosed during earlier previews. Frontline 59 had been a PlayStation exclusive until it was added to the Steam version as paid downloadable content.

Humble Games was the original co-publisher. In March 2026, Engadget reported that Good Games Group, a company led by former Humble Games executives, had bought the Humble Games back catalog from Ziff Davis and renamed itself Balor Games. As of October 2026, the Steam store lists Sector D2 and Balor Games as publishers of the base game, and the PlayStation Store lists Good Games Group, Inc.

Reception

Publication or aggregator	Version	Score
Metacritic	PC	75/100
OpenCritic	PC	73 Top Critic Average; 54% of critics recommend
PC Gamer	PC	78/100

PC Gamer's Leana Hafer wrote that the game "delivers exciting aerial combat and an interesting campaign, though it won't impress those looking for a hardcore flight sim", and found that the increasingly exotic super enemies, while adding variety, could be frustrating, and that the AI wingmen were not very effective. In UploadVR's VR review, David Heaney played on a Quest 2 through Oculus Link and called it "still a good game, but the shaky VR support drags everything down significantly". He criticized that the game has no default HOTAS mappings and no VR controller support, even in menus, so a player without a gamepad has to restart the game in non-VR mode to set up controls. He wrote that the cockpit view helps with comfort, although the speed and maneuvers could still bother players prone to VR sickness.

In a hands-on preview of the PS VR2 missions, UploadVR's Henry Stockdale enjoyed switching targets with eye tracking and said the headset haptics gave good feedback when under attack. MIXED criticized that the main game could be played only flat on a TV or on a virtual screen inside the headset, and wrote that a low render resolution and low-detailed landscapes made a bad impression in a short test. UploadVR later described the reception of the PlayStation release as mixed.