Pilot Winds Review

Pilot Winds

Pilot Winds has been in development for some while. If you are familiar with Tiny Wings then you will find the game somewhat similar. It has really wonderful graphics and the game play is a great time waster for when you only have a few minutes and want something to play for just a short period. It is also great for short periods of gaming because you don't have to remember where you are in the game from the last time you played.

The mechanics of the game are very similar to Tiny Wings. The biggest difference is that in Pilot Winds you press in the bottom right corner only, and you press through both the down slide and part of the up slide as well. It does come in a free version that offers a nice play mode. It is the purchased version that begins to shine with its six different play modes. There is checkpoint (also in the free version) in which you must race to a checkpoint in 60 seconds. If you make it then you race to the next one with any left over time added to your available time. Velocity requires you to keep your speed up or the game ends. Mad Minute asks how many points you can get in 60 seconds. The Bonus Play mode has you trying to see how many bonus points you can get as your only point source and make it to the checkpoint in 60 seconds.

The game works very well for what it is trying to do. I am afraid that given the long development time, allowing Tiny Wings to be released first, may end up hurting it. The multiple game modes may convince some to purchase this game. My biggest problem with the game is after playing Tiny Wings is that it just seems more of the same. It doesn't seem that the slide ropes varied that much. The music in the background was very annoying over time to me, thankfully you can turn it off. I also had very infrequent issues with the game stuttering causing it to break the flow of the game. I couldn't see a pattern as to why they happened, fortunately it only happened once in a great while. I would have liked to see the bonus mode have the same countdown timer game mechanic as velocity mode, where you had to keep getting bonuses to keep playing.

Given the fact that this game came out after Tiny Wings, normally I would have given it one star as a me-too/clone, instead it gets two stars because of the long development. The extra game modes are nice, but they aren't large variations on each other, so that only gets half a star. The graphics are well done and fit the theme and mechanics of the game well. It isn't a bad game, but for me it doesn't rise to greatness, so I am only giving it another star. I am giving it a total of three and half stars.