Parse The Sky is a beautiful yet simplistic, low-poly flight simulator built during the Ludum Dare 34 game jam.
As you glide around Parse The Sky’s serene skyscape, you’ll be tasked with collecting a series of ever-growing, slightly glowing orbs. Immediately upon loading up the game, we were struck by Parse The Sky‘s fantastic art direction. The use of color in the game is absolutely lovely, complimenting and contrasting with the stark white lines of the plane and the associated trailing vapour streams. Not to be outdone by the vivid hues on display, the game’s sound design is also a stand out, with its calming electronic music and immensely satisfying ping sound effects that chime each time you collide with a floating orb.
Through its carefully crafted sounds and visuals, Parse The Sky creates a world we’d love nothing more than to explore. Unfortunately, our ability to play Parse The Sky was hampered by its confusing, unintuitive control scheme. Making the plane move in the direction we wanted was a course in trial and error and more error. Often times, we found ourselves helplessly flying off into the gorgeous blue-tinted ether, desperate to turn around but unable to successfully perform the necessary combination of slight button taps to invert our direction. For us, our inability to grasp the controls led to frustration with both ourselves and the game, which was presumably the last thing the developers wanted, considering the relaxing atmosphere established everywhere else. As it stands, the magnificent world of Parse The Sky is still worth a visit, but unless you’re a savant at inverted flight controls, you’d be better off making it a short trip.
Note: Since Ludum Dare the dev has released a version which fixes the control scheme, allowing you to switch between inverted and non-inverted control schemes by pressing ‘X’. For the best experience playing the download version is recommended.
Download or Play Parse The Sky Here (Win, Mac & Browser)