Ready for take-off?
It is your last day, it is time to clock out and head home. But where is home? And what is home? Are you alone, Solo? The Plane Effect puts you in the shoes of Solo, a lonely office worker on his final day at the office and it is time to return to your beautiful family. You do have a family, don’t you? You think you do. You remember having a wife and child… you’re sure of it. Toying with your grip of reality and distorting the balance of time and space, Solo battles adversity as he traverses the abstruse and deeply aesthetic world of The Plane Effect. Along the dangerous path that Solo walks, you’ll be challenged with untangling impossible series’ of events, getting to grips with the intangible and using logic to overcome the increasingly illogical dystopia around you.
The Plane Effect is a puzzle game by nature as you try and get Solo home to his family, although there are so many different levels of crazy thrown at you including trying to get out of a giant worm/monster’s insides or driving down a motorway trying to avoid being killed by aliens. There are also visions or flashbacks of Solo’s life, as well as reality breaking down around him. You’d almost think that he was in the Matrix or something and someone’s trying to reset him to keep working at the office.
Strange surroundings aside, The Plane Effect’s puzzles are a bit of a mixed bag, and the solution isn’t always as simple as you would hope, some of which are fairly obscure. I had some trouble with a few areas, but I was able to finally figure out what to do, though timing is also important especially during sections where you need to avoid drone cameras or traffic when crossing the road. Dying is easy to do, but luckily checkpoints are fair for the most part.
It took me roughly 5-6 hours to finish the game from start to finish, which isn’t bad considering the low price point of the game, which is £12, but at the time of writing is already on sale to £9 till December 1st. There’s also a free demo available if you want to literally try before you buy.
The game has an unusual art style that is simplistic yet has plenty of charm and becomes more crazier as the game goes on. It’s impressive overall and the game makes fairly decent use of raytracing too. The game also has a decent soundtrack, matching whatever crazy situation you find yourself in.
The Verdict
While not ground-breaking in its puzzles, The Plane Effect does tell a decent albeit bizarre story with an impressive art style and it’s definitely memorable as a result.