Paper Sky is a joyful flight sim for people who suck at flight sims, and there’s a demo out now
Get high like planes
My experience with actual flight simulators typically 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 what Paper Sky, a "semi-open world paper plane adventure" from solo indie dev Brute Force, is offering.
You can play the demo on Steam right 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 bit Exo 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.
I like Paper Sky, clearly, and would like to play more of it, especially as the above trailer hints that your shapeshifting scrap paper will visit more fantastical locales than the quiet seaside town in the demo. That, however, may be up to the success of its Kickstarter campaign, which launched yesterday alongside the demo. Brute Force is aiming for a full release by the end of 2025.