Disclosure: I received a free copy of this game from the developers.

CW: This review contains examples of racist imagery.

If ever there was a target audience for a game about solving the mystery of an airplane crash, it’s me. I regularly trek down to the airport to planewatch, and delight in reading about airplanes and how they work. My dream is to become a pilot, though I recognise this is unlikely to ever happen.

Equally, I love mysteries. My favourite game in this series has been The Case of the Golden Idol . I love the process of putting pieces together into a narrative and of that narrative slowly unfurling. Everything about Plane Accident should have worked.

And yet it didn’t.

Fun fact! This aircraft is an Airtractor AT-502B, and it comes with airbags that seem to be missing in this game. Follow me for more the-amount-of-extra-research-i-did-for-this-is-tragic

Plane Accident is a simulation game. You play as a plane crash investigator, travelling from small plane crash to small plane crash, solving the mystery of why a plane crashed through examination of wreckage, black box analysis, and interviewing witnesses. If you - like me - have ever seen an episode of Mayday, this game presents a playable version of those stories, albeit on a smaller and somewhat more baffling scale.

The game includes a variety of scenarios in a variety of locations, though the gameplay for each is very similar. The player is asked to find the crashed plane, put out any fires, locate wreckage, and generally map out the site. The wreckage is then transported to a warehouse where it is assembled, disassembled, and examined, piece by piece. Regardless of the scenario, the same process gets followed, leading to an experience that can, at times, feel a bit more rote than intriguing.

The action of actually performing the required actions, too, is tedious. In addition to the same actions being performed at every scene, the player themselves has no freedom to actually investigate. Instead of using the tools they feel are appropriate, or digging into the elements they wish to investigate, the game instead lists out the next steps to be taken and forces the player to follow them, locking out other actions until the specified action is complete. When coupled with small elements like having to keep walking back and forth between a tool table and a work area, or have specified areas to put pieces that are not in use, the entire game begins to feel less like an investigation, and more like a guided tour. The player is not a pilot - they are a passenger.

But I’d rather take the picture from here. :(

The best example of the lack of agency and general odd feeling of the game is perhaps the first air crash after the tutorial. The player arrives at the crash site of an AT-502B. The plane itself is still on fire, so before the player can do anything else, they must -

Wait. Hang on. This is a plane we ultimately discover went down due to fuel starvation. When a plane crashes, it’s usually jet fuel that ignites a fire. Rarely, it might be leaking oil or hydraulic fluid, but generally, planes burn because of fuel. Why is this plane on fire?

This is not the question the game wants to explore. Instead, the game lights up the spaces a player needs to interact with, taking pictures that are later determined to be of no value, and enforcing a particular order of actions. Instead, the game want to focus on one of several potential causes. When calling witnesses, for example, the player speaks to Pedro (and we’ll talk about Pedro), who confirms he filled the plane’s tanks with two hundred litres of fuel rather than the two hundred gallons -

Wait. Back up. The blueprints on the wall say this an AT-502, and based on the plane’s shape, it’s likely an AT-502b . The AT-502b has a maximum fuel capacity of 170 US gallons, or 644 litres. The pilot couldn’t have requested that it be filled with 200 gallons of fuel, as that’s beyond the fuel capacity of the plane itself. This is setting aside that, as a US-built plane being fueled in the US, the various fueling gauges would have all been in Imperial units, meaning it’s unlikely that Pedro would have been in a position to mistake 200 gallons for 200 litres. This is also setting aside that, when determining take-off parametres, pilots calculate their take-off based on fuel weight rather than volume. 200 litres weighs a bit less than a third of 200 gallons, meaning there would be a noticeable impact on plane performance if it was carrying a third of the weight it was meant to. All of this suggests something much more systemic or perhaps sinister lies at the heart of this crash, that there is instead a long history of the pilot misunderstanding the parametres of his aircraft, or further modifications that were not disclosed, or any number of other issues.

This is also not the question the game wants me to think about. It wants me to instead reassemble a propeller, remove a seat, and follow the step-by-step instructions it provides to get to the end of the story. It does not ask me to investigate; indeed, it does the opposite. It wants me to set aside what I know about planes and about the world. That knowledge is counter-productive. Instead, it wants me to sit quietly, do as glowing lights tell me, and not think too hard about any of the mystery of the way. It is a tourism ad for mystery, a color-by-numbers version of art, a controlled ride that I’m expected to just absorb without question and without thought. The only challenge it presents is figuring out where to actually do the next step it’s demanding I do.

Also, it takes the racism I suspected lay in another Duality Games title, Barn Finders , and made it transparently obvious.

oh no

Every time the NTSB investigates an airplane accident, they do so with the intention of making flying safer. Every aviation safety regulation is written in blood, and each accident serves as a lesson for the future. The goal of an investigation, then, is not only to understand what happened, but what can be done to prevent it from happening in the future.

This is not the approach Plane Accident takes. It instead views investigations as isolated incidents, with nothing further to think about or learn from any of them. In the case of Pedro and the two hundred litres of fuel, the error was never anything systemic or anything that could be learned from. Instead, the game presents the crash as an almost inevitable result of the pilot hiring an undocumented worker. The game chooses to resolve the investigation through a reliance on racist caricature.

It ceases to be a colour-by-numbers version of mystery, and instead becomes a deeply uncomfortable exploration into the devs’ worldviews. This game believes I am stupid, and it expects me to go along with that assumption.

…why does it say bomb?

One thought that plagued me as a played through this game was the question of who this game is for. I should have been the target audience - I love planes and mysteries and accidents - but I’m obviously not. I come in with more knowledge than the game wants me to have, and too much desire for agency to be comfortable accepting the game’s hand-holding. I want to explore my ideas and theories, and this is not a game that allows for that.

Indeed, I don’t believe any fan of mysteries would ever be happy with this game specifically because of that lack of agency. Mysteries require that the player invest at least some thought and be able to explore their theories, but when the only theories it presents are prepacked and tied with a bow, there is no room for agency or thought.

I don’t believe an aviation fan would enjoy this game either. While the use of actual airplanes adds a nice touch of realism to the game, there are too many errors in how these planes are presented for them to be truly plausible.

I thought it might work as a walking simulator. There, the lack of agency and propelling through story is the point, but here, too, the game fails. There isn’t enough of a story to be interesting, and too much repetitive motion to be anything but tedious.

In writing this review, I realised there was one thing I wanted to check which I hadn’t captured in my own footage, so I found another player’s walkthrough . I skimmed the footage, found what I wanted to check, then went back to finish writing this review. And then, as I was finishing this up and musing about the audience, I went back to that footage. I watched this other player and read the comments on the video, and I understood. This player struggled with everything the game asked of him unless it was clearly outlined. This player didn’t read what was in front of him, or notice things that weren’t mandatory. He went through the mandatory steps and nothing more, and got confused when they weren’t sufficient. I was mesmerised watching him, trying to understand his expectations of not only this game, but any game, and I came to a conclusion.

This is a game for players who don’t want to play a game as such. This is a game for players who want vibes and experience, but want to be told how to have that experience. Much like Beasts of Maravilla Island is photography with the creativity stripped out, this is investigation with logic and curiosity torn away. It is not an investigation game for those who are interested in aviation or mysteries. It is a vibes game for those who, for the briefest of moments, want to be walked through what it is to play investigator dress-up.

But even there, even at that watered-down, nothing goal, this game fails. Between its racism and tedious design, it does not succeed at even that.

I would love an aviation mystery game. I am still waiting to find one. Plane Accident is not that game.

Developer: Duality Games

Genre: Simulation

Year: 2024

Country: Poland

Language: English

Play Time: 3 Hours

Youtube: https://youtu.be/UAGuVJpqWdY