Paper airplane but much funner!

If someone had told me 15 years ago that a mobile paper airplane game would be released soon, I would have been incredibly excited. Since then, my thrill about a prospective game of this kind had waned a lot, though, having recently tried out Flight!, that thrill has reawakened!

This game is a genuine breath of fresh air in the mobile gaming sphere, and I’ve never felt so hooked to a game originally designed for Adobe Flash since the first Angry Birds came out in 2011. This game excels not only in gameplay mechanics but also in its overall presentation.

Now, to be clear, this still looks like an Adobe Flash game. Nevertheless, the game’s unpretentious nature, along with its no-less-than-endearing backstory, should be enough to warm some hearts and, dare I say, even jerk some tears!

The premise of the story is fairly straightforward:  A  girl misses her mom and wants her back for Christmas, so she writes a letter to Santa asking him to bring her mother back home. She then folds it into a paper plane (because, apparently, she couldn’t have a smartphone back then) and throws it off the window in the hopes that it will reach him sooner or later. The plane ends up flying across various continents, reaching various characters and triggering a plethora of funny scenes in its wake.

I’d have to say, I’m a bit surprised that this game didn’t succeed as much as it may have deserved. Notwithstanding, it’s still up and running after all these years. I was also very astonished to learn that it’s almost as old as Angry Birds, yet I somehow missed it when it was first released.

The gameplay is the true star of the show here. You hold the plane with your finger, swipe to the right, and voila! Something magical happens. You’d then have to steer the plane as it’s lifted into midair to catch the shooting stars. The more stars you catch, the more money you earn. With this money, you can upgrade the plane to install more powerful engines and turn it into a spaceship that rips through the atmosphere. 

I also enjoyed the way the controls work here. I could really sense the gravity during flight and feel the breeze blowing against my airplane as it strived to remain suspended in the air. The way the game allows you to grab the plane also felt intuitive and immersive.

Throughout your playthrough, you’ll be flying across five different areas, to wit: England (Royal Mail), France (Borbonne-Le-Bonne), Egypt (The Prophecy), Kenya (To Be a Bird), and Japan (Efficiency). Each area has a total distance that you must traverse before advancing to the next one. You can also earn achievements depending on the number of days you spend on each one.

Getting these achievements is no easy feat, though. I heavily struggled to maintain altitude during my first attempts. This meant that I had to see lots of ads in the interim (you must play one before trying again, which kinda sucks.)

I could go on and on about not liking ads in my games but, fortunately, I wasn’t so annoyed by them this time around. I did wish those videos were shorter, especially since my initial playthroughs were fraught with quick unsuccessful landings.

Lastly, I should speak about customization. Yeah, apart from bestowing your pretty paper airplane with jet engines (talk about fire-proof!) you get the chance to customize your airplane’s appearance to boot. You can select between various colors, as well as some nice skins (most of them are countries’ flags). What’s more, all of them are free as of this writing. There are some placeholders - with “coming soon” written on them - which I suppose are for the premium skins, though I might be wrong on that.

In sum, Flight! is an excellent alternative if you crave a time-killer while waiting for your next work shift. It may not have all the bells and whistles of a Rovio Entertainment launch, but it may help you when facing gaming burnout.

Say anything you want about this game or this review in the comments section. The sky’s the limit! (don’t be too rude, though)