Game: Airheart -Tales of Broken Wings
System: Nintendo Switch
Developer/ Publisher: Blindflug Studios
Price: € 14,99 | £11.99 | $17.99
Age Rating: EU 7+ | USA E
Release Date: 31st January 2019
Also Available On: PS4/Xbox One/PC
Review code kindly provided by Blindflug Studios
Living in a city in the sky
Airheart – Tales of Broken Wings is a diesel punk action shooter which takes a somewhat different angle from what is usually thought of as an action shooter.
You play as Amelia, a young fisherwoman who lives in Granaria, a city in the sky. After losing her father Amelia strives to reach the top of the atmosphere where her father believed a fortune awaits. That is, a fortune of Skywhale.
Fish in Granaria can fly and Amelia uses her plane equipped with a barrel blaster and a harpoon to catch the fish. Though of course, you can just bump into the fish with your plane to catch them. The weapons are more useful to use to shoot down pirate planes that get in her way and avoid police planes. All this takes place in the sky. Obviously, since were talking planes here 
. Levels are placed one on top of the other up in the atmosphere and have more variety of fish the higher you go. The higher you go, there also are more powerful pirate plane and some boss blimps.
Fighting pirate planes in the skies above Granaria
Amelia’s wish is to catch the largest fish in the skies. To do so and to help defend against the pirate planes that are flying as well, Amelia must upgrade her plane. At the start, it isn’t the fastest or strongest. You can upgrade her plane in the hangar using coins that she receives from fishing, adding new wings, engine or upgrading your weapons. There is also a workshop where you can make parts with the items collected. Parts that have fallen off pirate planes you have shot down or hidden in the environment of floating islands.
As Amelia’s plane take damage you can either return to her base on Granaria by holding down the button. The plane then nosedives as you aim for the base. Or you can wait until you’ re shot down and take a chance of missing the base. It’s instant death then. Thankfully Airheart has two difficulty levels, a normal mode where you don’t lose everything if you crash land and a hard mode that offers permadeath where you lose everything you have collected and start at the beginning again.
Here is flight control
Airheart controls smoothly using both joy-con sticks. L for directing the plane and the R stick aims what ever weapon is equipped on the plane. ZL and ZR are used to shoot. There are fourteen levels to fly through, levels with colourful floating Island that can be hiding either an item to help or a drone shooting at your plane, oh and those pirates.
I like the look of Airheart with its colourful floating island in the sky, as you can see in the pictures the graphics are absolutely fine.
The music is for the most part laid back guitar themed while flying and fishing . But if the pirates come on the scene and then it changes to a more arcade style of music. It’s a good warning that not all is peaceful in the skies anymore and to watch out for the pirates.
This release on the Switch brings a new exclusive way to play called Party mode. Players with up to tyres friends locally can try to guide the exploration Zeppelin Sonne on its way to the stratosphere on the hunt to beat their high score. Sadly this reviewer didn’t have an opportunity to try that mode out.
Conclusion
There is a short tutorial at the start of Airheart tales of broken wings while the equally short story plays through, after that you left to get on with it. There is nothing wrong with that in this case as there isn’t much to be explained in the game other than fly, catch fish, shoot pirates and hopefully return to base with all your goodies intact.
If anything the fact that there isn’t anything other than fly, fish, shoot and return to base in a continuous loop would be my only complaint about Airheart, as it loops back up through levels you have already fished in over and over again.
Overall I liked upgrading my plane, hunting for that elusive Skywhale and climbing through the clouds while trying not to damage my plane to much.
So: I like Airheart: Tales of Broken wings.
