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Review: Paper Pilot for iPhone brings office flying fun

Are you up for the challenge of flying a paper airplane around an office to …

If flying a paper airplane to catch floating paperclips sounds like an appealing way to waste some time, then Paper Pilot for the iPhone is the game for you. In this first-person flier, you maneuver your aircraft through a variety of rooms, trying to catch each waiting paperclip. Catch it and it explodes for your pleasure. This reduces the outstanding clip count, and moves you closer to completing the current level.

Controlling the plane is both easier and harder than you might think. All you have to do is tilt your iPhone. Despite this, I found it difficult to plan my flight path so the plane would go exactly where I wanted it to. You must adjust for the angle of approach, your speed, and so forth. Hitting objects that are floating in 3D space is a lot more difficult than, say, running your car into a nearby light post. Paper Pilot lets you control your speed as well as your angles. Stroke the screen upwards to increase your velocity or downwards to reduce it. Slower airplanes are easier to handle with more time to react to upcoming objects.

Paper Pilot

Paper Pilot's strength lies in its immersive environment. The graphics are all quite amusing. I really enjoyed the details that made up the various rooms, including office areas, kitchens, and stairwells. These rooms are all well decorated with loving touches. Sadly, you cannot fly under the legs of the couches or through the empty bits of the book shelves.

Graphics is an are where Paper Pilot showed its weaknesses. During gameplay, the graphics are glitchy, particularly when flying near objects. Paper Pilot suffered repeatedly from surface removal errors, turning solid objects into cut-outs. This provided a oft-experienced reminder that the rooms and the objects within them are just model-deep.

Paper Pilot does not keep track of your current game level, so you cannot pop out and return back to exactly where you were. This means that you should treat each level as a separate task. If you fail to complete a level when a phone call interrupts, you'll have to start that level again from the beginning.

Beyond the piloting task, there's not much more to the game. That's not a bad thing, because flying the plane is lots of fun. Still, you fly your plane, catch the clips, and that's pretty much it. As you succeed, you unlock further levels. 

For two bucks, Paper Pilot is an amusing time waster. Unfortunately, it hasn't been a big hit among my kids. They find it more frustrating than fun, but it's likely to appeal to anyone who has good manual coordination and will appreciate the challenge of flying. I can easily imagine losing myself in this little flying world and having a blast while doing so.

Name: Paper Pilot (iTunes Link)
Publisher: Clever Coding
Price: $1.99
Platform: iPhone and iPod touch

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