Went back to this to see if I wanted to buy the full version.


I’d already got all the blue orbs when I played before, so decided to seek out the other colours. I couldn’t find them anywhere, but after flying around aimlessly for a while, I found a thermal taking me higher than I’d ever been before, finding new orbs (or jewels or gems or whatever they are) along the way. Then there was another thermal, then another. I went higher and higher and higher.

I went above the clouds.

The sky got darker.

Achievements kept popping up as I ascended until I was flying kilometres over the island.

It was tense, exhilarating, lonely, atmospheric and utterly, utterly brilliant. In terms of how it made me feel to be up there, near the edge of the atmosphere, with just a few thermals to keep me going up, I can only compare it to Ico. Isolation, the sense of being a tiny, near-helpless figure in a much larger world, all of that.

And all on an iPhone.

And then, when I’d got as high as I thought I’d get, I dived back down to earth, reaching terminal velocity as I twisted down and down and down.

When I finally got back down to the island, I checked the achievements for the game and noticed I could have got even higher. That broke the spell. I couldn’t be bothered to glide all the way up again, nor could I face the thought of doing it all over again in the full version of the game. So I didn’t buy it.

Rather anti-climatic, yes. I think I will pick it up at some point, but I think the feeling I got from the game was a one-off, never to be repeated.