The twelfth episode of a short series on games I discovered at EGX Rezzed 2016.
Fugl means bird. It also means a voxel flight simulator from Johan Gjestland. In Fugl the game, you play a fugl. A bird, that is. Your job is to fly around. I mean, that’s it. Just fly around. To be sure I hadn’t missed anything I asked the developer: yes, just fly around.
There were several versions available to play and I took on the tablet version, also known as the hardest one to get the hang of. I was told they needed to tweak the handling some more as it was too easy to fly into death. That’s what I did, a lot. My bird kept diving and crashing. Wheeeeee— crakkkk. Wheeeeee— crakkkk. I had such a problem flying around that I thought it was some sort of hardcore game.
But then as I started to pick it up a little, the game transformed from Flappy Voxel Bird to whooooooooooyeahhhh. That feeling of forward momentum, of gliding through the air was just wonderful. And the best bit was I landed the damn bird a few times and was able to just sit there and survey the voxel landscape. If you want to know how this game is supposed to feel, take a look at the video below. It makes me want to pick it up right now and fly through those canyons, across that jungle, and splish-splash through the cavern waterfalls.
Fugl offers several different procedurally-generated environments to explore. I actually liked the fact that it took some effort to master the art of flying, even though it was probably a little too hard on the tablet. It would be an interesting marriage of pure exploration and difficulty, without having to add any of that pesky fake collectible gameplay.
It’s coming to VR as well – someone was trying it out beside me at Rezzed – but I’d expect Fugl VR to be the perfect Let’s Nausea Great! game.
Fugl doesn’t have a formal site yet but there is a discussion page at Touch Arcade. You can also follow Johan Gjestland on Twitter.
Interested in the other games I dabbled with? Check out the series index!
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Ooh, I didn’t spot this one. Sounds like fun.
I did play another I forget the name of, one framed as an imaginative take on what happened when a relative’s plane went missing. This writeup reminds me of that. Seemed to either procedurally generate levels based on the associated music, or have a bunch of predefined levels that matched up, and you flew a light aircraft around these environments. I liked it, found it quite soothing and pleasant to try and rake my wingtips through little balls and blobs of colour.
You’re jumping the gun, Shaun. I’m writing about that on Saturday!
DAMN IT SHAUN
I spent at least a few hours calling this Fugi. Or Fugue-y. Or Fudgey. Little did my graphic designer eyes realise that the feather was an L not an I.
It looks fuggin’ beautiful though. Could do with some collectibles to give it some purpose (I jest I jest!)
I saw a mention of Aer on RPS today so I’m wondering how that game compares.