I never thought I’d be any good at wingsuit flying. First, it would require me to climb a mountain, or jump out of a plane, two things that I don’t plan on doing anytime soon, if at all. Second, I’m certain that as soon as I take flight, my body would involuntarily seize up, and I would just Frisbee into the side of the mountain, spewing vomit the whole way. Third, it would require me to go outside for an extended period of time, and hahahahaha.
So instead, my pale, but perfectly-safe, butt gets to experience wingsuit flying via video entertainment. Namely, through Superflight, a new indie game from GrizzlyGames.
The premise is simple: players take control of a little figure who appears to be made out of cardboard. It’s exactly as I imagine I’d look if someone gave me a moving box and said, “Here Tom, now go fly.” This is about how I’d end up looking:
And then I would die.
My time playing Superflight was half spent saying, “Ooooh, neat!” at the colorful landscapes I flew through, and half spent saying, “Ooooh, shit!” at the colorful landscapes I flew into.
It’s okay though, dying in Superflight is no big deal; players who crash lose whatever point combo-chain they had and their remaining point score is tallied on a personal and global ranking. Points are easily acquired by flying close to the landscapes, or through the little caverns and holes that are usually scattered throughout every zone. Each zone takes the form of a floating landmass, and the player is dropped near the top. If the player flies below the floating landmass, they’re transported to another zone where the descent continues. There are even warp portals that players can fly through to instantly be transferred to a new zone and pick up some bonus points for doing so.
Zones are procedurally-generated and players can generate and save their own maps to share with friends. For example, if you type EpicBrew into the seed generator, you’ll get a blindingly pink map. Pro tip: there is a hole straight down from the start of the map that leads right through to the bottom, so you can escape before your retinas burn out.
For under $3, I did not expect Superflight to bring much to the table. What you see in the video is what you get. The sound design is a bit rough around the edges, —quieting the wind whistling noise was a necessity— and a nice ambient soundtrack would have been nice, but then again, Superflight is a $3 game. Adding a custom soundtrack or a sound designer would bump that price up by a handful of dollars. An excessive cost when Spotify fixes the problem just fine.
I found that playing Superflight with a controller (I used a USB Xbox 360 controller and it worked flawlessly) feels so much better than using the keyboard. For whatever reason, the mouse is not used, so flying is controlled with the WASD keys, which felt clunky. The joystick on the controller felt so much smoother, and I could even recline back in my chair as I flew my little cardboard Iron Man into another mountainside.
[[RECOMMENDED]] Superflight is a fun, affordable game that perfectly fits into a quiet evening.
A Steam copy of this game was purchased by Epic Brew for the purpose of this review.
