Air Flip Drive
Welcome Time Wasters!
I know I’ve been doing a lot of these of late, but I’m back checking out another incomplete game. It isn’t on purpose. I promise. It’s just whatever happens to catch my fancy that particular week. No matter the case, let’s look at Air Flip Drive.
Air Flip Drive is an endless racing game that does its best to channel the F-Zero gameplay. It’s quite clear not just because the developer says so, but because of how it plays. The player is put in control of a simple racing vehicles that hovers above the ground. As the player drives down an endlessly-generating track, they move through rings to gain turbo and crash into other racers to collect fuel. When the player runs out of fuel, it’s game over.
While Air Flip Drive does feel like F-Zero, it also seems like there’s some Mario Kart influence in the game as well. This comes from the drifting system. Players can perform a bunny hop at any time and use that to go into a drift. This results in a trail of smoke appearing behind them. They can use this for tight turns and the arrow keys control the angle of the drift. It all feels a bit like drifting in a Mario Kart title.
Air Flip Drive’s race track generates loads of twists and turns for the player to fly around, as well as some other interesting elements. That’ includes the iconic cylinders that the player can drive all around on from the F-Zero series. There are also plenty of half pipes for the players to launch themselves with and gain great amounts of height. However, don’t go to far off the track. Doing so can result in a respawn, which takes away a large portion of the player’s fuel.
In it’s current state, Air Flip Drive is all about collecting a high score. There’s really nothing else to do. To be fair to the game, it is still in the works. I’m hoping the developer does a little bit more by creating specific tracks and bumping up the AI of the other drivers. As it is now, they often end up just driving along the side of the track after a short while.
When it comes to the visuals in Air Flip Drive, they are also a mix of F-Zero and Mario Kart. It’s easy to think of F-Zero X (my personal favorite in the series), with the low-polygon objects in the game. However, everything is also covered in rainbows too. I couldn’t help but think of the various Rainbow Road tracks from the Mario Kart series at seeing this.
The audio is obviously a placeholder. The opening menu has music that I would never think to add to a racing game. It doesn’t get much better once players actually start racing, either. There are also no sound effects when racing, but there are some blips for the main menu. Yet again, this is a game still in the works.
Overall, Air Flip Drive is good enough to kill a few minutes with. I’m always looking to scratch that F-Zero itch that Nintendo has left me with (Can we please get another one already?) and this did that. Even if it was only for a few minutes.
Unfinished game. Unfinished review. That’s how it works here at GiN. If this work in progress ever because something more, I’ll be sure to get back to it. Until then, take it for what it is and enjoy.