Controlling the plane with just your fingertip to point towards the direction you want to fly, you need to navigate through the endless waves of missiles being fired at you. Ducking and weaving, diving and dodging are your only tools to avoid impending doom as a seemingly very angry enemy on the ground continue to fire at you.
The missiles seem to pick up speed the further they are from you, encouraging a small period of calculation once they got close enough that they need to be dodged. This gives the player the ability to decide which direction to shift themselves to avoid impending doom.
The other feature that attempts to give Go Plane any kind of gameplay variety is the Fever mechanic. The longer you allow missiles to be close enough to you to be a danger, you generate Fever, eventually allowing you to erupt in super speed and force the screen into a variety of different colours.[sc name=”quote” text=”The longer you allow missiles to be close enough to you to be a danger, you generate Fever, eventually allowing you to erupt in super speed and force the screen into a variety of different colours.”]
When in this Fever state, your wind trail becomes weaponized, allowing you to destroy missiles that cross your tail’s path. This encourages you to start diving around the screen haphazardly, trying to catch as many missiles as possible while the intense rock music plays.
All this sounds lovely at first thought, but the problem is that there’s nothing after that. You fly around, still dodging more missiles and going into Fever now and again, but you just keep going to get a higher score.
Every now and then you’ll unlock new planes to fly for when you inevitably get destroyed and have to start over again – there doesn’t appear to be any stat differences, speed or otherwise, to any of the planes, meaning it’s entirely a cosmetic change. This leaves the player with only two reasons to play Go Plane – they’re addicted to a number getting higher without any kind of tangible reward, or, they have nothing else to do on a train and need to wait for the next station and don’t feel like a longer game.
Mindless, high-score focused games certainly have a place on any mobile gamer’s phone; it’s useful to sometimes be able to blank out with something wholly unfulfilling and just binge it, sort of like fastfood.[sc name=”quote” text=”… it’s useful to sometimes be able to blank out with something wholly unfulfilling and just binge it, sort of like fastfood.”]
The problem lies when there isn’t really any reason to keep you there besides the high score. The gameplay stays the same, the missiles keep flying and nothing really ever changes.
Go Plane could find itself a niche as a mindless fly game, but there are so many other contenders out there that beg for your time and limited phone space. Why would you waste your time flying around, dodging missiles with ultimately no satisfaction, when there are countless other apps that do something similar, but better.
Go Plane is a game you play when you forgot you installed it, only to then remember why you didn’t play it in the first place.
[review pros=”The physics effects are cool and entertaining.” cons=”The gameplay is incredibly limiting and empty. There isn’t anything to do other than fly a bit and try to beat an arbitrary score.” score=4]
[appbox appstore id1312798014]
[appbox googleplay io.voodoo.goplane1]
