Scenic, Free Online Flying Race Game

Scenic, a game from Bobblebrook (a name they dare you to say three times, but which is really, really easy to say three times,) is a game I stumbled upon after reviewing their brain mashing racer Flyde. Whilst playing Flyde, I found myself yearning for something slower paced, something more aesthetically pleasing. Scenic is that that game.

In Scenic, you race gliders around pretty tracks. The tracks are very pretty, but you'll need a decent computer to render them with any joy. Audio wise, effort has been made to create a calming, soothing ambiance that will make you feel as if playing video games is the secret to inner peace, eternal life, and shiner, smoother hair.

There are some interesting controls in Scenic, well, mildly interesting anyway. There's the traditional keyboard left right (for steering) and up for acceleration, which works well. Then there's also an option to use your mouse to steer, clicking the left mouse button for acceleration. Suffice to say, the mouse controls don't work terribly well. In fact, they turn what really is a very simple game into an impossible nightmare to play.

Another criticism I feel bound to make is that the game is only made challenging in any sense by keeping the track rather narrow and causing the glider to slow considerably when it deviates off the track. It's a fair enough approach I suppose, but it feels cheap for some reason, probably because the track is extremely narrow in most cases so one feels rather like one is playing one of those steady hand machines. You know the ones, the ones where you have a wire loop and a curvy bit of wire and you have to move the loop around the length of the wire without touching it? Yeah, like that.

Though you're supposedly flying a glider, there's no option to change the altitude at which you're flying, and though you bob up and down a bit, you may as well be driving a concrete block for all the grace and maneuverability the gliders have. Though I liked the glider aesthetic, I wasn't sure that gliders were really the choice for this game – after all, if you can't move up and down on the y axis, it's hardly flying now, is it?

Still, this is a pleasant little game, one that children will probably enjoy because of the pretty colors and serene atmosphere.

Play Scenic