Stickin’ the Landing is a challenging game about messing with gravity in order to help a paper spaceship reach its end goal.
In each level, you are presented with some items that are stuck in place and barring your path. These planets or obstacles aren’t going anywhere, but you can try to help guide your plane around them by placing stickers around the level to change the pull of gravity. These stickers show how much they will alter the gravity around them, and you’re allowed to place them anywhere as long as they aren’t on top of something already on the level.
Once you have your gravity-altering stickers in place, you can then hit Play and see how the plane reacts to what you have created. The game forces you to be pretty exact, though, as if you are even slightly off you will watch your plane crash into you or just not make it to the goal. If you want to get the award badge in each level, you are up for a real challenge.
Levels get ever more challenging as other obstacles (like bombs) appear, forcing you to make your decisions wisely. There is a little dotted line that shows the course that your plane went previously and where it ended up and that can help guide you in your next attempt. That said, a lot of the exact placements needed in Stickin’ the Landing really had me guessing and hoping.
I got the chance to play Stickin’ the Landing at the Bilbao Independent Games Conference, with the developers helping me out. It felt like a very challenging puzzle game made for players that want something that requires a lot of thinking (and likely several attempts to get the perfect path). I did enjoy the charming graphics and the sticker effect on the planets that you add into the game, but I felt it was far too challenging for me to keep my interest.
Stickin’ the Landing is available now on Steam.