When I was a kid, I once played some shareware game, the name of which I sadly can't remember. All I can say for certain is that it had "sail" in its name. I remember that clearly because that was the first time I encountered that word and wondered about its similarity to the word "sale" and its possible meaning. All I can remember about the game is that it was a sailing simulator (duh). But the imagery of it was very simple, yet very evocative. There were basically three colors: the yellow sand of the shore, the white hull of the boat, and the endless blue expanse. When I looked at screenshots of Aviassembly, it reminded me of that game.

But of course, being a rational adult man, I did not place any expectations on this game. All I wanted from it was a nice aesthetic and simple gameplay. But the game I expected the least from, ended up impressing me the most out of the 2025 releases I've played so far.

There is a surprising amount of depth in this simple arcade flight sim. What a weird coincidence that I played this literally after Easy Delivery Co. cause the games have a lot in common. This is also a delivery game actually. Except there's so much more to it.

You design your plane yourself in a Spore-like constructor, and the changes you make actually affect the gameplay. For example, after having my rear wheel often break upon landings, I decided to just put another set of front wheels on the back, and then extended the hull to have more room for carrying items, and put another set of front wheels in the middle. Now landing the plane became super easy, but basically I can't lift off unless I use some kind of a ramp, which adds more risk to it, but it also makes the lift-off so much more rewarding when you pull it off. Like one time I actually dipped into the sea and made it out, and that made me involuntarily smile and scream "YES!" and raise my hands in the air, lol. This game is just a blast.

And it has such a addictive gameplay loop: you deliver items, earn money and scraps, which allows you to unlock new items and improve your plane, which in turn makes you wanna try out the new improvements, so you go back to flying and delivering items again.

And see, contrary to Easy Delivery Co., this game does not sacrifice its mechanical depth in favor of aesthetics, but it's still got the damn aesthetics though. It looks gorgeous, has a relaxing soundtrack and is really well optimized.

The only reason I didn't rate it higher is that I expect to get tired of it pretty soon. But maybe not, so I might still increase the rating in the future. Definitely will be playing more of this.