My first experience with permadeath (outside of classic side-scrollers with no save feature) was a game called Steel Battalion, which was released with one of the largest peripherals to date for the OG Xbox. I remember coming home late from work and sitting down as my roommate was heading to bed. I booted up his game, figuring I would see if it was in fact worth the $150 cost of admission. Within minutes, I was dead and his save was deleted, as this was protocol in the event you didn’t eject from the mech upon death. Until this day, I told no one this dark secret.

The permadeath mechanic is essential to certain games, especially those in the roguelite genre, which relies on randomized events to stimulate longevity into otherwise basic games that wouldn’t have much staying power. Titles such as The Binding of Isaac use this mechanic in a smart fashion, where each failed run has the potential to inject new items or challenges regularly. This keeps things fresh and makes the player feel that even in a loss, they made it just a little bit further. Others, such as AIRHEART- Tales of Broken Wings, opt to completely disregard the player’s time and efforts making them start from scratch each and every time they perish, resulting in a completely disheartening experience.

You are put in the shoes of Amelia, a resident in the floating city of Granaria, serving as a sky fisherman. The young pilot is restless, living out her life making just enough to get by while dreaming of catching the elusive Sky Whale, which resides at the highest level of the floating city. I wish I could say that the story is captivating, but that is essentially it, due to the narrative becoming an afterthought after a brief tutorial and a few cut scenes shown each and every time you load the game.

This plays out like a standard twin stick shooter, tasking the player with collecting skyfish and evading space pirates in search of your precious booty. Collecting the fish and destroying enemy fighters will net you resources needed to craft upgrades for your plane, which can only be done via your workshop on Granaria. Your vanilla plane takes a pretty decent amount of damage from enemy gunfire, but running into the floating assets or enemy fighters will result in devastating hits to your health. While the title gives you frequent warnings that you need to repair your craft, it doesn’t really provide clear cut methods in doing so; take too much damage and you’ll be taking a nose dive. This is where the dreaded permadeath comes into play – should you crash land on Granaria, you can regroup and set back out on your journey on the flipside. However, if you miss your target, you’ll hit the desert wasteland below and see nothing more than a Game Over screen, losing all progress.

The games controls are very lackluster, making the entire experience a bit of a slog. I found aiming to be fairly easy, but the way you must navigate your ever moving plane is not. Most twin stick shooters opt for an accessible control method, where you push the stick left and move towards the left; this title goes with the tank control method, requiring you to steer left or right within the 3D space, making navigation and evasion of enemy crafts to be quite difficult. The base plane does not allow for turning on a dime and requires very wide turns, resulting in me ping ponging my way along the levels on most attempts. The sequence that occurs when you are taking a nose dive is no different, with the controls fighting you along the way. While this does add a true sense of dread as you are speeding towards your demise and simulate what I would imagine to be a terrifying experience, it’s far from being fun.

In the event you are successful at taking down some of the enemy pilots, you can acquire blueprints that allow you to easily craft upgrades if you have the materials available. This is yet another disappointment, potentially more so than the control scheme. As I stated earlier, everything is lost in the event you die, meaning any materials you squirreled away are gone if you die. Upgrades require a great deal of resources to craft, resulting in me simply trying to progress through the various levels without collecting much and reaching the Sky Whale. Needless to say, this method didn’t work out as planned, but it did allow me to see a bit more of the game than the grinding method.

The setting is a refreshing change, opting for the wide open skies opposed to dungeons or generic landscapes that most rougelites opt for. The execution is acceptable, with well rendered enemies and environments, although the standout visuals are during the animation you see while falling to your death. The true sense of speed and smoke spewing from your plane look splendid, even if the end result is a letdown more often than not.

With so many great rougelites on the market, I find it hard to recommend AIRHEART- Tales of Broken Wings. The game adds some refreshing changes to the genre, but with all of its current flaws, it is a bit of a broken experience and in need of its wings being clipped.

4 out of 10

Pros

• Fresh Setting
• The Nose Dive Sequence Looks Great

Cons

• Awful Crafting System
• Tank Like Controls
• Permadeath Wipes All Progress

AIRHEART- Tales of Broken Wings was developed and published by Blindflug Studios. It launched on PC and PS4 July 24th, 2018 for $14.99 and $17.99, respectively, with a future release coming to X1. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. If you’d like to see more of AIRHEART- Tales of Broken Wings, check out the official site.

 

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