Sora Winds of the Jungle

Whenever I receive a code to review a game I've never heard of before, Google is my best friend. Google is the friend who informs me and quickly gives me an idea of what I'm about to experience, explaining whether I should be prepared for zombies, racing cars or mushroom-eating plumbers. This time, it was clear that I was going to embark on a thrilling journey through the jungle sky, and that didn't sound too bad. The game itself is a flight simulator, and you play as the colourful parrot Sora, who has to make his way through the levels with his flock of flying friends. After about five minutes of playing, however, I realise that Google has been talking nonsense, because "breath-taking" is not a word I would use to describe the gameplay. Hmmm, what word am I looking for? How about "understimulation"?

It's not often that I'm at a loss for words, but for the first time in a very long time, I'm really having to think about what to write as I sit down to review this game. Unfortunately, my lack of words isn't due to being surprised by a surprisingly good game, but rather because I don't have much to write about now that I've finished playing Sora Winds of the Jungle. To be honest, not much happens. From what I understand, the game developer EpiXR Games wanted to make a game that would be relaxed and calming, but for me, the game's slow pace becomes a sleeping pill after the first level is completed. It feels a bit lacking in action to make a flying game where the only point is to get to the finish line without any points or timers. It doesn't matter if you come in first or last, a bit like today's children's competitions where you get a medal and a certificate just for participating, which I've always thought creates kids who don't learn to work hard for a goal.

The flying itself is reminiscent of the mini-games in the old Spyro the Dragon, where you had to fly through rings, and the comparison doesn't stop there, because even the graphics look like they belong on an old console, so it's not something you'd do somersaults for. Each flight path has between 40 and 60 rings and wind boost rings that you have to get through, and there is no indication of how many rings you have left to get through, which made many of the paths feel endless. You fly over everything from oceans with large ships, jungles and caves with lava, but you miss a lot of the views as you're mostly focused on the rings in front of you and the graphics don't provide any kind of wow effect. You can set three different speeds for the game: relaxed, normal and fast, but I think all three were a bit of a sleeping pill, and I sometimes had to spur myself on to stay awake.

As I mentioned before, not much happens. Sometimes you might fly into another bird in the flock and veer off course a little, but you quickly get back on track. During my game, I never had to use a checkpoint or replay a course, as the game is very simple after all. You have to complete eleven tracks, and if you happen to fly a little too slowly, you will receive a warning when your flock has reached the finish line, and a clock will start counting down from eight seconds, which is the time you have to flap your wings into the last ring and reach the finish line. The music in the game feels very out of place and is actually more suited as background music for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and being forced to listen to the same tunes for the nearly two hours it took to play through the game actually made me turn off the sound completely in order to avoid dying a little inside and contemplating sticking my head in the toaster. There is a saying that "it's the journey and not the destination that counts," and those are words I have always lived by. But what do you do when the journey is sadly boring and all you want is to reach the destination? I'm not really sure which target audience will appreciate this game. It's for ages three and up, and maybe a very small child would enjoy flying a parrot on an uneventful adventure with no point whatsoever, but what do I know? But I need something more and, above all, something meaningful.