Game: Stickin’ the Landing
Genre: Puzzle
System: Steam (Windows) (also available on Nintendo Switch)
Developers | Publishers: Adrift Team | Entalto Publishing
Controller Support: Mouse & Click
Price: US $7.99 | UK £6.69 | EU € 7,99
Release Date: October 24th, 2024
A review code was provided, many thanks to Entalto Publishing.
Not every gamer is up for the gritty mathematics of Kerbal Space Program, and maybe you’re not in the mood to simulate every detail of life inside those deep space ships, like, say, Little-Known Galaxy, or Starfield. Maybe you even loved to noodle around with paper airplanes when you were a kid. I did. I remember when I bought a book showing how to fold multiple paper airplane varieties at the Scholastic book fair.
Sure, I stunk at getting them airborne, but that’s not important right now. Point is, Stickin’ the Landing is a cozy indie game that relies on paper airplane-style flight and cute sticker-pack art to teach you a little about how to *checks notes* uhhh… navigate gravitational anomalies in order to complete a variety of test flights. Okay, there, Interstellar, let’s see how you do.
All Systems Green, Launch When Ready
Despite how suddenly crunchy your goals sound, there’s nothing stressful about taking flight in Stickin’ the Landing. Your folded paper rocket merely needs to get from point A to point B, bearing in mind how the celestial objects already on the game screen will impact the rocket’s trajectory. Planets and moons have gravitational mass, so they’ll pull the rocket in, where it will land with what space nerds occasionally call a rapid unscheduled disassembly.
Fortunately, it’s a paper rocket. It’s fine. And you have tools at hand to counter the situation: a pre-sorted (and hand-drawn) sticker pack that you use to counteract the various travel hazards that smarmy, grinning cartoon moon has in mind for your ship. Those stickers offer gravitational shifts of their own, and careful placement means that gravity now works for you. Eventually, anyway.
Just like real life rocket science, but with a lot less napkin math, success at Stickin’ the Landing means a lot of little readjustments are necessary. There’s no time limits, no turn counter, and no actual consequences. Crashing your paper rocket (it lands with a soft crumple, no harm done) pauses play, so you readjust your stickers, hit play again, and see what happens. Probably it crashes again, but this time with more pizzazz. So you adjust again, at your pace, until Parchment Project One lands safely at its goal.
Stickers For Your Landing
To emphasize the chill nature of the actually pretty tricky physics at play here, the game’s aesthetic is all based around paper craft and hand-drawn stickers. Moons and planets are doodled up like cartoon animals or silly eyeball aliens to give them a little personality, and the endless void of space is anything from a kid’s hanging corkboard dressed up with various doo-dads to the wall of dad’s garage space.
Controlling the game is a simple matter of mouse swipes and clicks, all of which are smoothly replicated on a Steam Deck’s pre-set scheme if that’s your preferred PC device. It’s good that it’s simple, because the game requires an increasing amount of ADHD hyperfocus in mastering the minor adjustments needed to complete each level. The amount of hazards increase, along with a variety of other obstacles, and so too, do the number of stickers you have to wrangle in response.
The game is very responsive, allowing easy handling for the slight adjustments you’ll have to make, so if the game is your thing, actually playing it is a breeze.
Sticking the Landing with Stickin’ The Landing
The only drawback to Stickin’ the Landing is that engaging with these sometimes granular physics challenges absolutely must be your jam, otherwise it’s just sessions of studiously rearranging stickers around a board for a little bit of huzzah (and some collectible star stickers) when you succeed. If you think that’s for you – and fortunately, a demo is available – the game is wonderfully designed and a joy to play.
If your particular type of ADHD, however, is not going to get the good serotonin from this game, nothing you can do will make it click for you. That’s no fault of the game, and it’s not your fault, either. This is a case of a game being designed for a specific type of mental niche, and while that spectrum of enjoyment may be pretty broad, it also might be a case where the game doesn’t engage you for very long. That, unfortunately, was where I landed. Nonetheless, I have no trouble saying it’s a charming game that excellently nails what it’s trying to do.
Conclusion
Stickin’ the Landing is a charming, easy to play physics puzzler that lets you be a rocket scientist without all the study. With its colored pencil aesthetic and no-fault play style that encourages you to experiment, it’s a terrific game for the right kind of mind. With a demo available on Steam, there’s no risk in trying it all out and seeing if its brand of peaceful but purposefully fidgety gameplay is for you.
It’s the kind of game that not every player will click with, but those that do are in for something special. Stickin’ the Landing is simple but fun, offering plenty of potential zen-like moments as you get that cute little paper rocketship home just one more time. While my attention span can’t click with the game as deeply as I’d like, I see a lot of good times here for other players willing to take a chance on a new kind of experimental flight.
Final Verdict: I Like It A Lot
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