Paper Plane XR

WebXR · Meta Quest · passthrough

Throw the plane. Judge the lead.

Throw paper planes over a hex diorama, and pick your moment to let a bomb go.

Play in headset

A link, not a download: open it in the Quest browser.

The same diorama a few seconds into a run: a white paper plane out over the barrage balloons, a string of yellow tracer rounds climbing towards it from a flak gun below and leaving a trail of dark bursts in the air, and a small bomb falling away towards the meadow. The panel now shows the level's clock at five seconds in green, one plane up and one bomb dropped.
Five seconds in: the plane threading the barrage under fire, and the first bomb on its way down.

How it plays

Three things to learn

  1. Throw

    Squeeze the grip and a paper plane is in your hand. Let go mid-swing and it glides off over the diorama, slow enough to follow. Roll your wrist as you release and it banks that way for the whole flight.

  2. Judge the lead

    While the plane is up, that hand's trigger drops a bomb. It keeps the plane's speed for a moment and then falls, so a target under the plane when you press is a target the bomb sails past.

  3. Read the pads

    Everything military stands on a red-and-white pad, and nothing civilian ever does. From flying height you cannot read a silhouette, but you can read a pad. A house costs more than the best target pays.

What is down there

Pads, guns, balloons

Every military target stands on a red-and-white pad and nothing civilian ever does. That pad is the whole of the game's honesty: a player who bombs a house had the means to know. Civilians are worth more against you than the best target is for you, and they are rolled in among the batteries on purpose. A bomb one hex wide of a gun is a bomb in somebody's house.

  • Flak batteries have to come round onto a plane before they fire, and they fire at where the plane will be. A gun turning your way is the first warning; a string of tracers curving onto you is the second.
  • Balloons are moored in exactly the band a thrown plane glides through. Touch one and the plane comes down tumbling; put a bomb through one and it pops, opening that lane for the next run.
  • The wind sleeve stands on the shore and turns to where the wind goes. It is the one thing down there on your side, and the dearest thing on the board to hit.
The Paper Plane XR table seen from where a player stands: a dark slab carrying seven interlocking rows of hexagonal tiles — green meadow, darker forest dotted with conical trees, a blue lake, sandy shores and a grey ridge of hills — with a tank, a helicopter, a howitzer, a supply truck and two flak guns standing on red-and-white pads, a village of houses and a church on bare ground, an orange wind sleeve on the shore, and five grey barrage balloons floating above the board on long cables. An orange-bordered panel to the left is headed 2-7 The garrison, gives the level's brief, a par of 70 seconds and the weather, and counts six targets standing.
Level 2-7 as it opens: six targets on their pads, a village, the barrage overhead, and the briefing beside it.

What makes a run

Weather, night, and the score

  • Wind you can see

    Clouds drift at the wind's own speed and the sleeve lifts with it, and the planes fly in it rather than being pushed: a throw into a headwind climbs and comes down short, a throw across it is carried a hex or two downwind.

  • Night

    After dark the pads cannot be read and the guns are blind, until a searchlight locks a plane. The village's windows are lit and nothing military ever is, so what the night shows you is where not to drop.

  • Levels, and three stars

    Twenty boards across two chapters, each rolled from its own seed so a best time means what it did. A star for every target down, another for nothing civilian hit, a third for beating par from the first throw.

  • Yours to keep

    Progress stays on the headset. The game talks to nothing, so once it has been opened it plays with no network at all. No account, no sign-in, nothing to keep updated.

Ready when you are

Squeeze the grip, and throw.

Play in headset