STAY ON TARGET

Flywrench, a fast-paced micro-level puzzle game, quickly crushes players towards an addictive yet rewarding relationship. With a gradual sense of diversity and stellar score, Flywrench quickly became one of my top sleeper hits for this year.

Flywrench opens with a simple premise – players pilot a ship though our Solar System to eventually reach the Sun. Throughout the adventure, the ship unlocks various abilities to change it’s polarity (essentially the ship’s color on screen) to pass through beams and get closer towards the end goal. Levels offer various hazards that will force you to maneuver your ship quickly and precisely – otherwise you’ll face destruction. Despite a razor thin plot, Flywrench’s addicting gameplay loop kept me hurtling toward my destination

The constant barrage of levels gave a quick sense of accomplishment accompanied by a gradual ramping in difficulty. Even while crashing repeatedly within a level, I always knew exactly why I lost. The mental discussion I had with my failures allowed me to go further upon each subsequent attempt. The lightning-fast restart times kept my adrenaline high and increased the elation of success.

Though this game isn’t pushing the boundaries of PlayStation 4’s graphics, the visual effects of a 2D pixel adventure are reminiscent of a classic arcade cabinet. An onslaught of flashing colors and exciting sound effects hooked me into the style of Flywrench. I couldn’t help but stick in the introductory planet levels for longer than I should have for the sole purpose of listening to the adrenaline-inducing music. The happy surprise of discovering the list of music pieces within the game in the Options section was a nice touch from the creators, Messhof.

Keeping in line with the arcade feel, Flywrench also has a compelling time trial section where players must complete a suite of levels from a planet and upload their times to compare to other players. As someone who is intrinsically competitive (for better or worse), I found myself working to become masterful in Pluto’s levels. The urge to replay levels surprisingly became a meta-game to compete not only with my own high scores, but the high scores of others. This made the predominantly single-player game an even more addicting online multiplayer calamity of an experience.

The Verdict: 8.4 Out of 10

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Even with a forgettable story, Flywrench quickly enamored me with it’s great pick-up-and-play mechanics, stellar score, and nostalgic art style. I found myself happily replaying levels as practice for the inevitable speed run to get the best time possible towards the high score charts. The creators of Nidhogg have a sleeper-hit on their hands that I can only encourage others to try!

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For more information about what the score means, check out our official review scale.

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Follow Harry Loizides, Editor-In-Chief, through his life of video games, obstacle races, and other adventures with Instagram, Twitter, and IGN.