Paper Pilot

By Gary Lucero on January 21st, 2009
Our Rating: :: AVERAGE
iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad

Paper Pilot is a racing game for the iPhone. You navigate a paper airplane through eight courses, from the inside of an office building to a sewer, attempting to set the fastest time. Environments look great and the controls aren’t bad, but the overall action is repetitive and ultimately unsatisfying.

Paper Pilot is essentially a racing game. You race against the clock to navigate a paper airplane through a number of sharp looking though static environments. You control the paper airplane by tilting the iPhone, and you control its speed by swiping on the screen to set it. Your objective is to catch a certain number of paper clips in each level, and you have to do that in a minimum amount of time in order to rank and unlock more levels.

For a racing game to be fun, it has to offer some sort of catch. With Paper Pilot its environments are its catch, and they look fantastic. All of the environments, from the insides of offices to the sewers, all look great. Most are static though, without any real movement or interaction. The airplane itself is also static, as it doesn’t flutter or move the way a real paper airplane would.

The races themselves are time trials. You have to beat each course in a set amount of time. Although two levels of the first environment, Main office, are unlocked at the outset, you can’t get to the remaining six levels without ranking with a certain time in the first two. Game play then consists of trying each level repeatedly, attempting to reach the paper clips in a different order, or by using various speeds, until you finally beat the level.

Ultimately this is quite repetitive. The game play is quite simplistic, and once the paper airplane is going fast, it can be quite challenging to control. Combine all this with in-game music that is just a loop of the same thing playing over and over again and you have a game that forces you to find a way to enjoy tilting your iPhone while watching a static paper airplane fly through pretty environments.

While that may not sound like a bad thing, it’s not terribly exciting, either. Paper Pilot has a very difficult time competing with games where you are racing against others or where animation in the environments can make it all feel more alive and real. What the author has here is a good foundation to build a game on but I am quite convinced it needs more work before it can be recommended.

Paper Pilot

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Buy Now: $1.99

Our Rating: :: AVERAGE
Read Our Full Review >>

Released: 2009-01-12 :: Category: Games