I’m a huge fan of Luftrausers, but I always wanted it to be a little more than an arcade game. If you haven’t played it, it’s basically Asteroids (another favorite of mine, when I can find an original cabinet with an oscilloscope), but with gravity physics. JetLancer takes the gameplay and gives you a whole single player campaign and more complex mechanics (you get multiple weapons at once, a spin, a boost). WindRunners (of which I’ve only played the Demo) is similar, but it’s a roguelite. They’re all quite difficult, but WindRunners is both less punishing and more tedious. You have a lot of health, but so do your enemies. The two gameplay aspects that set it apart are the steering and the lack gravity in the gameplay. In both Luftrausers and JetLancer, if you don’t use your engines, you fall from the sky. In WindRunners, your plane will automatically bounce off the water. And while you have a boost button, your engines, and therefore lift, are automatic. The steering in Luftrausers and JetLancer are like the original Ateroids, where you use left and right buttons for clockwise and counterclockwise. In WindRunners, you just aim where you want to go. This makes learning it significantly easier. However, since flying and turning are basically automated, the controls feel a bit less fun to me.
WindRunners might have the most aesthetic graphics of the three. I’d wishlisted it on Steam quite a while ago. This might be somebody’s perfect game. I don’t think it’s mine. Try the demo, it’s free!