Aer: Memories of Old

AER creates a beautiful fantasy world with a wonderful flying mechanic to explore it, but ultimately doesn’t give players much to do besides repetitive platforming puzzles.

AER is a pretty and charming game, but doesn’t have enough of its own original ideas to feel fresh, and it is plagued by a few flaws that prevent it from being a true standout in the genre of artsy indie exploration games. That said, the experience itself is fun and pleasant, even if it isn’t particularly memorable. If you already like these kinds of games, you’ll enjoy AER, but if you don’t, this isn’t what will make you fall in love with them.

Featuring a stunning low-poly art style, a wonderfully well-integrated soundtrack, an ingeniously simple control scheme, an interesting transformation mechanic, and impressively designed temples, AER has a lot going for it. It’s unfortunate that the experience is as short as it is and there is no way to keep track of what’s been seen. A few more environmental puzzles and a simple journal would fix my only complaints about this exploration-heavy title.