Flight Walkthrough

Flight by Krin Juangbhanich (creator of Sonny) is a launch game with a sweet but simple premise. You control a paper airplane bound for Santa Claus and the North Pole, containing precious cargo indeed; a letter from a little girl whose only Christmas wish is to see her mother again. But before you can say D'AWWWW, her letter winds up passing through the hands of different people all over the world who have their own interpretation of her Christmas wish.


Click and hold on the paper plane at the start of each level, and "toss" it with the mouse, releasing the left mouse button to let it fly. Once you've bought the rudder upgrade, you can use the [arrow] keys or [A] and [D] to turn the plane and help direct its flight as long as you have fuel left. Picking up stars grants you cash you can use to upgrade your plane, while catching paper cranes gives you a temporary multiplier to your funds. The farther you manage to fling your little paper missile, the farther the plane actually travels, passing through different locations on its way to the North Pole. You'll learn to make use of shooting stars for boosts, how to avoid perilous wind conditions, and more in order to get to your destination.


Analysis: I've never been good at paper planes; ask me to make one and you're going to wind up with some horribly misshapen paper monstrosity that flies half a foot and then executes a perfect nose dive. Despite that long history of bitterness, I took to Flight almost immediately. It's a relatively simple game, but offers a lot of charm and polish that makes it worth the play. There's just something breezily enjoyable about Flight, from the clean graphics to the fast-paced gameplay, even if there's not much variety to it.


Each part of the world you travel through has its own design, although you're admittedly going to spend a lot of time cruising at higher altitudes where everything tends to look the same, so you might wind up wishing there were more things to encounter in the mostly empty sky. Sky whales? Sky pirates?... what? Birds? You're boring. If you fight your way high up, you'll find space stars, which are worth more than the regular stars you encounter, but fighting your way up often isn't worth the fuel. The farther you go, the better you'll probably be at flying your little paper craft (or at least the more kitted out it'll be with awesome upgrades), so you'll probably find that the game moves a lot quicker in the latter half than it does in the beginning.


For me personally, the biggest flaw in the game actually feels like the story behind it, which unfolds in brief cutscenes between stages. Not only is the ending unsatisfying considering the bittersweet beginning, but there's also a cutscene in Egypt that just makes little sense at all, and just feels bizarre and out of place. (And is actually what earned this game a Y rating to be on the safe side rather than a family-friendly G, so check it out before you let your tots play if you're concerned.) Regardless, Flight is still an extremely polished little launch game that will definitely appeal to fans of amateur aviation, and keep you upgrading your stalwart paper craft for a while. It just goes to show that if you really want Santa to know what you want for Christmas, a good old fashioned stamp and some baked bribery is the right way to go.