The creators of Piloteer ($2.99) understand that if you can't fly, at the very least you should fall with style. You play as the inventor of the world's first jetpack, and you'd think becoming untethered from the Earth would be a joy. But with its punishing physics system, the game brings you crashing to the ground again and again. What makes this iOS game so great is that these frequent failures are part of the fun. The frustration makes you want to improve and play again, not smash your iPhone or iPad ($445.00 at eBay) against a wall.
Let Go Your Earthly Tether
A brief tutorial gets you acquainted with Piloteer's…unique flight controls. Tapping the left side of the screen rockets you up and to the right and tapping the right side sends you hurtling to the left. Since you're always either falling or quickly travelling diagonally, doing something as simple as hovering in a straight line requires constant, careful readjustments. Games where moving is the challenge have become their own subgenre (look at QWOP or Octodad; Piloteer glides (un)comfortably into that niche.
Flying a jetpack in this game is tough, maybe even as tough as flying an actual jetpack, but Piloteer effectively uses gentle humor to soften the blows of its looping cycles of death. The game's lovely paper-cutout art style shines as you soar across quaint urban environments. And when your character inevitably crumples into a limp ragdoll mess, the whimsical visuals keep the mood amusing rather than gruesome. After all, even successful landings usually look like they should be breaking your character's shinbones.
Other atmospheric elements ensure Piloteer is always pleasing to play. There's no explicit story, but news headlines regularly appear to remind you how naysayers in the world at large think jetpacks are an abomination. It's up to you to gracefully prove them wrong. The game's soothing ambient soundtrack is also a delight, which makes sense considering that the developer, Whitaker Trebella, has a strong musical background.
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Enter the Void
The Free Flight mode is great for getting familiar with your jetpack, but when you're ready to put your skills to the test, Piloteer includes 60 missions. The objectives are pretty small-sounding. Stay in the air for five seconds. Land on a park bench. Do a front flip. But when wrangling your jetpack to go where you want it to is this demanding, just a few tweaks to these challenges causes the difficulty the skyrocket. Fly above the clouds and land. Do a backflip and land on the ice cream shop. Fly through hoops.
It's great how these missions force you to fully wrap your head around Piloteer's fantastically unforgiving flight mechanics. I felt like a god of aerodynamics after figuring out how to consistently pull off the more-complex aerial maneuvers. However, Piloteer eventually settles for mixing the same handful of core mission types together instead of coming up with new ones. Completing the missions rewards you with medals that unlock two new environments, so you'll want to finish them. Just pace yourself so you don't get burnt out.
Empty, and Become Wind
Even if you never finish a single mission, there's still fun to be had flying through Piloteer's friendly skies. At first, I was concerned that levels were too small, and it's true they could stand to have more horizontal space, but then I started flying up and didn't stop. The screen zoomed out, buildings and streets faded into clouds and stars, and only once the moon was within reach did the game burn my wings. The pathetic crash that followed this moment of wonder was the perfect punchline.
If flying were easy, we wouldn't appreciate how incredible it is. By confronting you with endless failures, Piloteer makes your victorious liftoffs as big an achievement as the invention of the jetpack itself.
Piloteer makes flying a jetpack on an iPad or iPhone as frustrating as it would probably be in real life, but that's why it's such a fun game.
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