Expanses I've Flown: Race the Sun

Race the Sun
Arcadey "Racer"
1 Player
System: PC
Developer: Flippfly
Year of Release: 2013
Piloted: January 19th, 2015

I heard about this game a while back and always wanted to give it a go. Eventually it found it's way into a humble bundle, like most downloadable titles seem to nowadays, so I ended up picking it up. I finally gave it a shot and it pretty much lived up to my expectations, a simple arcade-y experience with a pleasant atmosphere.

All you do is move left to right avoiding obstacles and grabbing power ups. Power ups are scattered about the land and unlock as you level up. The level up system is surprisingly similar to Luftrausers which I talked about in an earlier post. After dying the game over screen displays three current challenges of varying difficulty. Fulfilling these earns you points, leading to level ups. This unlocks more power ups, either showing up randomly on the map or abilities that you can actually equip to your ship. Things like speed up, jump, a magnet to pull things toward your ship, and more eventually unlock.

If you're expecting a super deep game you might be disappointed as all you have to do is move left to right, and on rare occasions hit space to jump. One neat thing to help raise interest is that every twenty four hours the map changes. I don't know if it's randomly generated but it helps breathe a bit of fresh air into the game. After you survive long enough another, more difficult map is encountered. I know there's at least nine regions, as they're called in game, but I've only gotten to the fourth.

I really enjoyed my time with this game, but I don't have much to say about it. It's just not an overly long experience. I'm sure over time I'll get further, and unlock more interesting power ups. But I haven't written here in a while and most games I've been playing have been games I've already written about. So a short entry for a short (and sweet) game feels about right really. If you can pick this one up for cheap I highly recommend it. I think it's ten bucks on Steam (which I think is a little high) so look up some videos to see if you're interested. These pictures don't do the game justice.