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Paper Sky is a joyful flight sim for people who suck at flight sims, and there’s a demo out nowGet high like planes

Get high like planes

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Brute Force

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Brute Force

Our paper plane flies through a sunny village in the Paper Sky demo.

Myexperience with actual flight simulatorstypically amounts to approaching the runway far, far too quickly at far, far too perpendicular an angle, so perhaps I’m better off just flying folded-up bits of A4. Happily, that’s exactly whatPaper Sky, a “semi-open worldpaper plane adventure” from solo indie dev Brute Force, is offering.

Paper Sky - Kickstarter TrailerWatch on YouTube

Paper Sky - Kickstarter Trailer

Cover image for YouTube video

You can play thedemo on Steamright now, as I have, and it all looks like good, clean, floaty fun so far. Starting life as a discarded note, which you can write yourself, your scrumpled paper ball quickly rolls out of its stuffy office and takes to the skies as a remarkably glide-sustaining plane. Upon reaching the semi-open world bit, you can switch between the ball and the plane at will, with the former able to roll and jump and the latter able to ride gusts of wind to pick up speed.

It’s all a bitExo One, if Exo One was more colourful and went harder on jangly glockenspiel. At the same time, Paper Sky requires more of a deft touch to effectively zoom around in plane form; while obviously taking liberties with physics, you do need to be at least somewhat mindful of your pitch, roll, and yaw movements to avoid a bending your plane’s nose on a wall. Not that this marks a failure state – just get the ball rolling and take off again – but you probably will feel compelled to keep as much pace as possible. Like another of my favourite movement-heavy indies,Wavetale, that lovely soundtrack swells as you gain speed, like a little reward on top of the pleasures of momentum itself.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Brute Force

A paper ball rolls through a messy office in the black-and-white intro to Paper Sky’s demo.