Game Review: Paper Flight – Speed Rush (Xbox Seriex X)

Developer and publisher EpiXR Games describes Paper Flight – Speed Rush as an interactive game experience that is designed to ease your mind while you have fun popping balloons.

A description that couldn’t be more wrong. Aside from the fact that it is a game and playing it is an experience. As for easing your mind and offering fun? The gameplay is so tedious and the design flaws are so notable that it just ends up being an annoying game to play.

Not exactly what EpiXR Games were going for.

Paper Flight – Speed Rush is a very simple game to play. It’s a basic flight simulation where you control a paper plane placed in small arenas in a variety of locations. You’ll be flying through levels based on an office, a supermarket, a house, a museum, a space station, and more.

There are 11 levels in total, which might not sound like a lot, but some of them are quite large and the balloons you need to pop to progress are deceptively hidden about the location.

However, that’s not what extends the lifespan of the game. No, that comes from the excruciatingly slow flight of the paper plane.

Throughout the levels, there are smaller, coloured balloons that, when popped, fill up your momentum bar. It’s this, with a simple press of a button, that speeds you up so you can pop the bigger balloons and progress the level. This means, you’re constantly saving your momentum rather than using it. You’re forced to slowly fly through a level searching high and low for the balloons you need. It’s painfully slow, something that is made worse by the larger levels and the lack of a HUD or indication were the next balloon you need to pop is.

If that wasn’t bad enough, it’s a game with invisible walls. An infuriating inclusion that seems to be worse on some levels more than others. If the space station level is memorable for being so tedious, the museum level is memorable for the invisible walls. Hit one of these walls, and you’ll respawn at the point where you last popped a big balloon. Which could be at the other end of the level. Hilariously too, the controls become briefly super-sensitive after a respawn. How is this relaxing or fun?

Can it get worse? Of course, it can. It looks terrible, with screen-tearing and massive frame rate drops, and the music is uninteresting and bland. Overall, it’s an hour or two long and the achievements require nothing more than completing each level. So, it is at least an easy completion. Though you won’t feel good about it.