Review: Kid Pilot
As a kid most people had a toy plane which you would fly around on adventures in your imagination. Kid Pilot wanted to bring your childhood back to life in VR, and lets you revisit that part of your past. I have now been flying a toy plane around within Virtual Reality, but did it bring my childhood back to life?
Release Date: May 23rd 2024
Developer: Flamingo Simulation Systems
Publisher: Flamingo Simulation Systems
Price: £16.75
Reviewed On: DPVR E4 Black
* Code Provided For Review *
Follow Your Dads Adventures
The story of the game is told through postcards before each level. These will tell story of your dads adventure or childhood. This gives each level a bit of meaning to go with the what the team have made with each location you visit in your imagination with your toy plane.
Relive Your Childhood
As previously mentioned Kid Pilot want to bring back the feeling of being a child, as you fly a plane around different locations only made possible by a child’s imagination. The way the team at Flamingo Simulation Systems have done this is by having a model plane, with the movement being controlled by moving your hand – making it feel like you are holding the toy. With the trigger allowing you to shoot projectiles when needed. Giving that true feeling of playing with a toy plane in your room.
Each level you play has its own theme and own challenges, be this flying through rings in set amount of time, shooting all the targets, collecting items, setting high scores or taking on bosses in some intense fights. The challenges are well designed around the levels they are set in, and keeps each location feeling fresh outside of the theme they have.
Outside of the main challenges on the levels, most of the levels will have hidden letters to locate which spell out Pilot. So, you can always go back in to each level if you missed them on your first playthrough. Which can give more reason to go back in other than just enjoying the levels in general and wanting to fly around them again and try to explore and find everything possible.
With the way game plays and them mixing up the overall way each level plays it gives you a good mix of some chilled levels, some intense levels and some difficult boss fights to keep you on your toes. But, each on is just an enjoyable as the last.
Completing these locations will add items and challenges to the central hub, which comes to life the more stars you add to it for completing the levels. In this area you can also switch up your plane as you unlock more.
The Power Of Imagination
All of the settings you visit in the game, be it soaring through the clouds in the tutorial, flying around a toy box, flying through a speedway tunnel or around an amazon forest look great and sharp inside of the HMD, and all feel like something a kids imagination could come up with while playing with a toy plane. The switching up of these environments keeps each level feeling fresh and with most coming with their own plane, it really helps add to that feeling.
Each setting will have its own ambient sounds mixed with music that goes well with them, be it a more relaxing tribal music in the amazon or the face paced music in the speedway – it all suits what you are taking in visually. However, in some of the levels the repeating ambient sounds can start to become annoying as they are going off so often.
Comfort
The Verdict
Kid Pilot really brings back the days of being a kid and flying your toy plane around with your imagination running wild. With a good mix of environments, challenges and different planes to keep everything feeling fresh. With the game control scheme design really giving you the feeling of holding a toy. With relaxing, intense and difficult challenges across all the available content there is plenty of reason to love Kid Pilot, if you are looking for that nostalgia hit.