It's fine, but a little dull.

AER is a relaxing adventure puzzle game similar to Rime and Journey in a lot of ways. Unlike those games though AER is missing that special something so that at times rather than relaxing it's just a little boring and directionless though it does have some great moments of beauty here and there.

The basic premise of the game is really good, you play the role of a girl called Auk who is a pilgrim that can transform into a bird allowing her to explore a series of floating islands while traveling from Temple to Temple.

Taking flight and soaring through clouds and low skimming the ground in bird form is great, relaxing and thrilling at the same time though sometimes the landings on small islands can be tricky, especially when I first started the game I had to adjust the camera sensitivity in the options as it was hyper sensitive, I had to literally halve it to make it playable which for such a relaxing game with no enemies I found really strange to be set that high. When not flying Auk is on foot either solving very basic puzzles in Temples or running around the islands looking for spirits or tablets that expand the words lore. The main problem is that lore is insufferably boring. After a while of looking around I realized I just didn't care and moved on with the very short story instead because there is little else to gain from going from island to island. The three temples you visit have some incredibly basic puzzle solving that could have done with more items or objects to give more options. As it is you mostly just activate switches with a lantern and that's it.

The Visuals and audio are mostly good. The graphics are intentionally done in the old 3D polygon style from the early 90's and it's an effective style so the game looks good. Though no voice acting the music is pretty good with some epic scores while flying around or in temples. There was an annoying audio glitch from time to time of a sort of ticking audio pop which while I was playing in headphones was extra annoying.

All in all, the game was fine. I finished it in about 4 hours and it had some nice moments but it's the sort of game in a week I will have completely forgotten about. If you want a game like this pick up Rime, Journey, Flower or Abzu all of which manage the style a lot better in my opinion. A real shame as I'd been interested in AER for a while.

+ Flying around as a bird is pretty cool.

- Starting camera is insanely sensitive, had to tone it way down.
- Lore and story are pretty boring.
- Puzzles have pretty much only one aspect the whole game.
- Audio pop glitch got annoying.

"MASSIVE CRASH ISSUE! UNABLE TO RESTORE SAVE AND FORCED RESTART!"

Would've tried to finish this game, since it was a decent experience up until the second piece of the key I had redeemed. I landed in the town area where you must use the second key, hit a building, and every object in the world started to delete and the screen stopped moving. I could still hear audio, but the game basically hard locked, so I had to end the program through task manager. Upon trying to reload the save file, I waited nearly ten minutes, twice, without the game loading. Unless there is a way to fix this, I will Not Recommend this game due to the crashing experience. If there is a way to fix this without restarting the game, I would be happy to change my review.

Final Verdict: 3/10 (Poor)

I didn't think this would be my type of game as it doesn't really have any actual 'content'. Having said that, this game is just super relaxing. The artstyle is pretty and the music when you take off is breathtaking. There are a few puzzles however most are quite easy to solve.

Exploration here is amazing too as you can fly anywhere from the get go. The sense of mystery in the spirits and world is fantastically done as lore is entirely optional for those who aren't interested.

The only complaint I have is the ending. I was expecting something to happen towards the end but there was no final 'dungeon' or anything like that. It kinda just ended.

While the game is brilliant, the price certainly is not. It's not the longest of games so I would recommend getting it while it's on offer.

80

É realmente um jogo mais de tela do G0ularte do que um jogo focado para o player sentir uma história ou algo diferente, é um dos jogos passatempo que você antes de jogar nem sabe que tinha uma história, mas é divertidinho até, eu achei bem divertido as fases contando mais sobre o mundo que vivemos e os designs dos deuses do jogo são bastante bonitinhos, claro não é nada INCRÍVEL, mas ainda é bem intuitivo... A gameplay bem relaxante de ser um priquito e nada nesse jogo deixa de ser uma tela de fundo dos vídeos do G0ularte.

This is a small game. The lore is scarce and subtle and the map is reigned in by some design limitations. But the feeling that you get when you emerge from the opening cave and sling yourself into the open air, that feeling is big. Huge. Soaring. Flying around these mysterious floating islands, finding fragments of lost souls and moments lost to history, exploring crumbling temples, everything rendered in chunky but polished polygons - it's a feeling of wonder that very few games are able to communicate for me. The exploration of a barely-inhabited open world of temples and ruins reminded me a lot of Shadow of the Colossus, but there's a much lighter tone to this wonderful little indie game (and a lot less content, for sure). Others have criticized the unengaging lore, but I like that it exists as a sort of writing on the wall, a collection of hearsay and oblique references that you surround yourself with but never make an effort to truly understand. The old words are old. All that really matters is the slipstream beneath your wings and the plummeting exhilaration of turning from bird to girl to bird again, careening through the sky with heft and grace and total freedom.

I love flying; can you tell??

AER is a very very pretty game, let me make that perfectly clear. The first hour or so is just full of moments of explorative wonder as you explore ruins, solve some basic puzzles and glide across floating Islands. It's soothingly and very serene...

But then deja vu really starts kicking in and you realise the games already shown most of what it has to you and suddenly, despite the game being pretty short, it still manages to feel dragged out thanks to repeated landscapes, similar looking ruins and a game running on empty.

I don't think it would be inaccurate to call AER "yet another Journey-like"; it's another atmospheric adventure game that instead of focusing on "fun" gameplay mechanics or the open world formula of side-questing + collecting, simply sets you on your path and encourages you to explore the world around you, complete with minimalist graphics and an often somber yet contemplative soundtrack. The flying controls feel great as you soar across this ruined civilization marked with rubble, ghosts, and decay. Where I think the game falls flat when compared to Journey and ABZU is both the telling of its story and its fundamental temple zones; the story is told with a lot more dialogue and reading than Journey (which I find to be a bit unnecessary when the atmosphere of the longing for the past tells more than enough), and the temple zones require a fair bit of 3D platforming, which I would say is passable but not great because the carried aerial momentum of your basic jump is fairly noticeable and can definitely mess up your platforming. Otherwise, AER has some very cool ideas and tends to execute its airs of nostalgia and solitude quite well, but it can feel a bit droll at times and tends to take time away from what it excels in for more generic fare; it's still worth a look if you're into Journey-likes, but for anyone else, you may find it quite middle of the road.

Played via the UK PSN release on a PlayStation 4 Pro.

This game is a perfectly fine way to spend an afternoon or evening - it's relaxing and soothing but with the occasional frustrating platforming section and an opaque plot making it difficult to recommend to most folks.

The flying mechanic is probably the best feature here with an easy-to-grasp-yet-rewarding-to-master controp design - it feels extremely satisfying to fly between islands and swoop between structures and plant life, trying to avoid crashing into surfaces so you can maintain your bird form for as long as possible. Moving on ground can feel painfully slow in comparison, especially in the temples where you're unable to fly - having a sprint option would have been appreciated here. Jumping can lead to outright frustration however and is probably the weakest feature of the control scheme, being a tall jump that leaves you unable to adjust your trajectory as tightly as you'd like. This combined with some platforming that doesn't make itself clear due to low-lit environments can result in slightly frustrating falling down a gap leaving you to have to make your way slowly back up to where you were.

The artstyle and presentation of the game is fine I think - each of the menus are very simple offering very little outside of appreciated control tweaks while the overall aesthetic of the game adopts the oh-so-popular low poly style that indie games love to utilise. It looks fine here and is elevated with a good lighting system, but when comparing to other "lonely wanderer" games like Journey or The Pathless it feels like it's missing something to make it wholy unique. The sound design is similarly ok, with appreciative feedback on actions and ambient environment noised but the soundtrack often devolves into sounding like someone fell asleep on a synthesizer. It can be relaxing, and the kick of ukelele and percussion when you're flying helps keep your attention a bit more but it often has the unfortunate effect of feeling like an endless droning and the intro area feels one of the worst examples of this.

The narrative could be the make or break for a lot of people depending on your tastes however - you're given vague objectives from a handful of other villagers but it's up to you to explore the world, finding the spirits of long dead people and the scriptures and stone tablets left behind. I usually like this style of story telling, giving me an excuse to properly explore the world of the game and look in every nook and cranny but it often goes in contrast of the flying mechanic, making you fly past every single floating island in the hopes you'll find something and then struggling to land when you're going at a million miles an hour. As such you rarely want to land and you find yourself skimming over the smaller islands to more thoroughly look through the larger ones.

It all culminates in a disappointing ending too, with the world building and relationships you forge with people and creatures resulting in a 10 second cutscene of not much happening before the credits roll. I tried piecing the lore of the world together as best I could and I could probably take a guess as to what happened, but the lack of clarity to it all and with no real resolution provided was just disappointing.

I believe there were a couple of glitches too, with my system crashing once (thankfully the autosave feature helped me out) and a scene in a cave with stone tablets that gives you the hint to ask another character for help deciphering them, but you never get the option to do so. The 10-20 second loading screens were a little tiring too but I've experienced worse.

Overall AER is an ok game - the flying mechanic is very much the main attraction and if you enjoy storytelling via what you find scattered throughout the world rather than cinematic cutscenes you'll find something to keep you entertained for a few hours. But it's not without its frustrations and the overall ok presentation leaves AER feeling a little forgettable at times.