A Short Flight by Rongo Matane

[raw]
made by Rongo Matane for Ludum Dare 59 (JAM)

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Your plane is fixed and you're back in action! The only problem: the bill is already due, and Big Mo is not the sort of naked mole rat you want to stay indebted to....

So take to the skies in your seaplane! Explore this tropical atoll and look for evidence of a mythical treasure. Meet the island residents and run favors for them to earn some extra pocket change. Who knows, maybe they've seen something sparkling just on the edge of the horizon.

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Team:

René Habermann - Direction, game design, writing

Anne Hecker - Character art

Raffaele Picca - Art direction, tech art, 3d art

Christian Brandt von Fackh - Coding

Luca Martinelli - Coding

Asbjørn - Coding, 3d art, cutscenes

Ron Kaiser - QA

Martin Kvale - Sound design

Cameron Paxton - Music, web assets

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🎵Download the OST for free here!🎵

Ratings

Overall 36th 4.222⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Fun 72th 4⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 442th 3.357⭐ 37🧑‍⚖️
Theme 735th 2.889⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 2th 4.833⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Audio 9th 4.472⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Humor 80th 3.956⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Mood 36th 4.4⭐ 37🧑‍⚖️
Given 10🗳️ 19🗨️

Feedback

Antonina Bahareva
Apr 21st · 13:51 UTC
This game has such a great atmosphere — the visuals and music are really pleasant and work beautifully together. The character voice acting is honestly a standout, it’s incredibly well done. I had a lot of fun with it — it’s charming, engaging, and the flying feels especially good. You can tell a ton of effort went into this. Really awesome work, and thanks for putting this together :)
Enriranjan
Apr 21st · 16:40 UTC
The voice acting and the game itself are fun; the atmosphere is really well done and really gives you the feeling of being in a small plane on a remote island.

The gameplay is really well done for such a short time—congratulations!
Meemog
Apr 21st · 16:46 UTC
The description on itch is honestly a mood. I am surprised you managed to complete this in 72 hours, the game feels really polished and the flight controls feel good. I especially like the visual effects. The dialogue was funny, and I honestly just had fun flying around. I did notice that some islands didn't have collision, and if I pressed escape, there seemed to be some dev options left in, but overall, an amazing game, and you should be proud of yourselves
VerttiXPertti
Apr 21st · 16:54 UTC
This is insane for 3 days. Great use of a big team I must say. A short hike is one of my favorite games and this scratched the same itch. Flying around in this big world helping people, so much fun! The graphics were amazing, I loved the water especially. Wow!
23edsa
Apr 21st · 18:37 UTC
The game feels insane for just 3 days, great polish an mood!
Phoenix Fireflower
Apr 21st · 18:47 UTC
I see you've been inspired by A Short Hike and honestly, you may have created something even better. The smoothness of the flight controls, the humor, the voice acting, the visuals... this is one of those rare entries where everything clicks. I normally also give critique but aside from a random piece of rock I was able to fly through, I couldn't come up with anything. Outstanding work!
Reed Molbak
Apr 22nd · 22:29 UTC
Great atmosphere and polish! Flying the plane is really satisfying.

Because the islands are far apart, there's no map, and the plane moves a bit slowly, I got a bit frustrated towards the end because I had a hard time remembering where to go, and it felt like there was a lot of trial and error. I found a compass at some point, so maybe there was also a map. But the world is super compelling, and I spent a while just flying around.

I think there's also a bug with the color changing guy, I visited him and didn't buy a re-paint, and my plane was just invisible at that point (there was a transparent one towards the bottom, but it never looked full again).
LDJam user 428646
Apr 22nd · 23:03 UTC
This is just amazing. Even with a team this big, it's still a herculean task to make something like this in such a short amount of time. There's so many fine details which normally get ignored in a jam that are spot on here. Incredible stuff! I'd love to see a full release of this. It's not all that connected to the theme, but that's a small price to pay for this masterpiece.
oxnh
Apr 23rd · 00:51 UTC
Wow impressive graphics, music, and scope for 72 hours. I'm not a huge fan of the linearity though. At the start I went to the island with the red statue first, then traveled in reverse order before finding where I was supposed to go first. Obviously when I landed at each island I hadn't activated the quest first so I nothing happened. That's still a minor gripe good job.
Lenny Rudeberg
Apr 23rd · 10:43 UTC
So much good stuff going on here, the whole team has done some impressive work to achieve this within such a short period of time. Really loved the various characters and their voices gave me a good laugh as well. I could spend forever exploring the magestic open waters and islands of your game. GG!
stayawayfrommeow
Apr 23rd · 17:01 UTC
I had a great time playing this game. Summer vibes hit hard. Simple and smooth controls, excellent sense of speed and gorgeous view. What would make the experience even better imo is idle stimming while you are flying. Or some rings that boost speed when flown through would do wonders.
SHAKIROVICH
Apr 24th · 03:11 UTC
I really love this game, gives me vibes of short hike and Porko Rosso combined. Question, did you guys used qurahawa effect for distance?
Egrassah
Apr 24th · 13:37 UTC
Nice gamefeel and music/sound design ! the game is fun to play, congrats
hirqshi
Apr 24th · 19:28 UTC
That is impressive for 72 hours, really impressive. With how polished the game felt and with how much content is impelemented, even some little storyline with characters, that is truly insanely great job. My own nitpick is that i would like to fly more and talk less but thats just me. Graphics is impressive, gameplay is solid, game is polished even tho I encountered like one bug where my plane became invisible. Just great
half-animal-half-beast
Apr 24th · 22:12 UTC
i’ll admit i’m usually not a big fan of third-person flying controls, but in your game, controlling the plane with the mouse felt really smooth and intuitive, probably the first time in my life i actually enjoyed it. acceleration and braking still felt a bit off to me though.

i ended up skipping most of the dialogue. i think the game might benefit from letting the gameplay and visuals carry more of the experience.

the visuals are really cool, makes me want to try something in a similar style!
overall, a very cool and impressive game!
digital bacon
Apr 24th · 23:04 UTC
Well done for putting this together in such a short time! Loved the graphics, story and flight mechanics, though I did find one bug:

![a_short_flight_bug.png](///raw/21c/31/z/72a25.png)

Excellent work -- well done!
LDJam user 428140
Apr 25th · 01:39 UTC
Really impressive! I like the art and the some of the dialogue is really funny![Screenshot 2026-04-24 184450.png](///raw/c68/86/z/72a51.png)

I did get stuck and couldnt figure out what to do after I got the guy to the frog party and my only quest was the original 3 cat statue quest (I think I had 2/3) it was a little difficult to tell progress. This is really amazing for only 72 hours. Great job!
incredible polish, and a great flight experience! and great ambience! thanks for making this, team!
nexusasx10
Apr 25th · 16:38 UTC
This game is huge and very polished. Looks like a steam game made by a professional team. Art style is awsome and music is very good. However towards the end of the story flying becomes boring. Especially when you need to win in the race to proceed. I didn't finish the story but maybe come back to it later.
Dogshroom
Apr 25th · 17:51 UTC
Awesome entry! Great graphics, character controller, and overall level of polish. It’s like A Short Hike, but a Short Flight...

I loved that you can’t actually crash and just pass through geometry (or was that a bug?). Either way, it’s a smart decision for a jam game. You avoided the need to build additional systems and supported the chill vibes perfectly.
jordantanner
Apr 25th · 23:16 UTC
As others have said, vibes are on point on this one. Lovely retro graphics-- did you use a pixelated shader to achieve this effect? Very cool. The decision to make the airborne camera have a different FOV and also play different music was a great design choice. Character art was great, funny dialogue. The idea to not animate the characters but instead use a squash/stretch on the sprite was clever way to save time but still add life. I didn't really get a strong sense of the use of the theme "Signal" in this project, but this entry is definitely an accomplishment you should all be proud of. Congrats!!
LDJam user 278146
Apr 26th · 05:28 UTC
Amazing graphics! I really liked all the quirky characters and dialogue. The controls for the plane felt good in the air but a little sluggish to get started or come to a stop.

I couldn't work out how to get Marten to fix his statue even after apparently getting the mortar so I couldn't finish unfortunately.
daniel
Apr 26th · 18:43 UTC
Impressive stuff for a jam game. Love everything about the style and presentation, colour palette and the plane model especially. The audio was also really a standout for me, music fit the style perfectly and everything about the plane's audio design was great.
Nozomu57
Apr 28th · 20:11 UTC
This was such a joyful experience! Thought I would hate the chaotic errands, but it turned out to be fine. There always were plentiful of them I was doinf so I almost never felt I was doing double and triple rounds.

Felt like there was not enough connection to the topic, and game was often mildly laggy, but gladly none of that bothered too much. THe plane was very responsive, probably my favourite casual controller for a plane I've seen! Also the music was very chill, reminds me of some 3d games from 00's like old lilo&stich game. Awesome mood, thank you :)

Also special thanks for final "victory lap", was much appreciated.

P.S. after mole's words I went to check north, and found nothing... sigh
Zathnic
Apr 28th · 22:49 UTC
Great visuals, I especially like the water splashes when you take off with the plane! The flight controls are satisfying, but maybe taking off could be a bit quicker. But overall it feels like a complete package with a beautiful mood!
Le Don
Apr 29th · 23:01 UTC
Great game! For some reason the beginning of the game is quite laggy for my PC - I used the web and windows build. I also got kinda lost at the beginning, but I guess that might be on me.
zimny11
May 08th · 13:47 UTC
That a great game! Love the art, love the music, great sound effect, intuitive control! As usual well done.
zhangzhimu
May 09th · 07:19 UTC
Such a cute game! This style is just too adorable. With the dialogue added, I even thought I was watching an animated cartoon with its optical illusion effect. Hahaha, it's really interesting.