DropShot Is a Hyper-Stylized Shooter and a Personal Project

DropShot is a new, stylized first-person shooter created by Detroit developer Neil Jones, known as Aerial_Knight. The project began as a concept Jones shared with his longtime friend Daniel Wilkins, a sound designer and collaborator who died in 2024, and was finished within a year.

Jones, who released Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield in 2021, says he treats games as an expansive art form that lets him shape everything from level design to music. The game’s lead, Smoke Wallace, is purple-skinned but read by many players as Black; Jones says representation and making work for underserved communities matters to him.

DropShot’s story was largely invented later for marketing: Smoke is bitten by a radioactive dragon, his family is eaten, and he fights aerial battles while firing blasts from his fingers. Jones avoided giving the protagonist a traditional gun, opting for finger-shot mechanics and inventive power-ups—one turns Smoke’s arms into an eight-armed Gatling of finger blasts—while enemies are armed.