"History Flight" is a history quiz game for Windows and macOS where you control the sideways movement of an aeroplane, and navigate it – guided by your knowledge of historical facts – safely down the road of history. Each question has four answers, and it is only by maneuvering through the correct one which continues the pilot's journey. Developed by Sanning Arkitekter in Unreal Engine 4 with the aim of expanding the understanding of the game engine, beyond architectural visualization, it is in essence a very simple game. But rather than only allowing it to teach and entertain the two of us, we hereby publish the alpha build as a free download (see link below), since we believe there might be more history buffs out there, willing to test their knowledge and potentially expanding it by doing so. With only 134 questions included, the alpha build is lacking content, but the existing questions do stretch from A.D. 68 to 1995, and sample categories like world politics and religion, discoveries and the arts, monuments and individual fates. The difficulty level varies between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the feudal system in medieval Japan, between the lunar landing and the first opera premier, between Nelson Mandela and the historical role model for the fictional Robinson Crusoe.

With the limited number of questions follows that the selection is dependent upon personal interest of the authours, which calls for a disclaimer that the selection can be deemed as characterized by Anglo-Saxon historiography and Western, Christian tradition. This is no game reflecting the history of the world – this is a quiz game aiming to be fun and potentially educative for those interested in history. Although 134 questions may be seen as few, we encourage anyone interested to try to answer them all (and thus encounter the biggest bug of the alpha build) – with this build, we ourselves have achieved a maximum of 61 correct answers trying to "beat the game" – the only thing you risk is attaining a wider understanding of in what years certain historical events happened.

If the player succeeds in maneuvering through the correct answer, such skill might be rewarded with the opportunity to fetch a power-up: here a sort of compass...

...which, when activated during any given following question, will always orient the player to the correct answer.

A lifesaver when encountering difficult questions – however, it will be forfeited if left unused and answering any question incorrectly. This makes it an act of delicate balancing when to use it, since you have to ask yourself how early on you actually need it.

Other question may give the player the chance to recover a lost life, or add another one to the remaining, rendering the question extra significant to answer correctly.

System requirements

To run the program, you need a DirectX 11-compatible GPU (which should not be a worry for those interested in games, since DirectX 11 is a standard established during the Windows Vista SP2 lifecycle).

For Windows, 64-bit versions of Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 is supported.

For Apple computers, macOS 10.13.6 High Sierra or later is required.

Download

For downloading, click one of the two links below.

Windows (7, 8, 8.1, 10; 64-bit): click here.
The compressed .zip archive is 104 MB, and the extracted files are 241 MB.

macOS (10.13.6+): click here.
The compressed .zip archive is 113 MB, and the extracted file is 333 MB.

Installation [Windows]

Instructions for installing in Windows 7 and later (only 64-bit operative system versions):

1. Download the .zip archive (see link above)
2. Extract the archive to your chosen directory
3. Double-click "HistoryFlight.exe"
4. This will launch the game (no installation needed) – if it does not or an error occurs,
you may need to install the Unreal Engine 4 prerequisites (for DirectX, Visual Studio),
the installation program of which is found in the "Prerequisites" subfolder

Installation [macOS]

Instructions for installing in macOS 10.13.6 and later:

1. Download the .zip archive (see link above)
2. Extract the archive to your chosen directory
3. Double-click "HistoryFlight"
4. This will launch the game (no installation needed)

Gameplay

Regarding gameplay, the following applies:

The game is undisputably to be regarded as an early alpha build, so please have patience with bugs and finicky behaviour – if you do not, we are happy to receive your suggestions in the comment field below.

From the main menu you begin a new play session by pressing "Play".

You control the sideways movement of the aeroplane with < and > (left and right arrow key), alternatively with A and D.

If you maneuver the aeroplane through the correct answer, then it safely continues its journey, and you get a point for your great knowledge of history – if the aeroplane collides with any wrong answer, then the pilot suffers and you lose a life.

For every consecutive correct answer, the speed of the aeroplane is accelerated. For any wrong answer, the accumulated speed increase is lost.

If you successfully navigate into a heart, it will be added to lives remaining; if you fetch a compass, you will take control of it, and it follows the aeroplane (in front of it).

Press SPACE (space bar) to activate the compass, and it will point straight to the correct answer.

When the game is over, and if you scored enough correct answers, you are given the opportunity to enter the high score. Enter your name with the keyboard, and press Enter to confirm your input.

You may at any time cancel the game session by pressing Escape (if it does not work, test if left-clicking anywhere in the game window, thus "activating" it, solves the problem). Press Escape once more, or when you are in the main menu, to quit the game (in macOS CMD+Q also works; in Windows ALT+F4 does the same).

Uninstallation

Regarding uninstallation, there is really no need to uninstall the program in any other way than moving the archive and its extracted file(s) to the recycle bin. The alpha version is portable and does not install itself in any program directory. However, if you want to delete the save game created and stored locally to save the player's high score list, do the following:

In Windows, navigate to C:\Users\USER\AppData\Local\, where "C:" is your system drive letter, and "USER" is your username. If hidden folders are set to not show, and the navigation feels difficult, then you may alternatively enter "%AppData%" (without quotation marks) in the address field of a File Explorer window, and press Enter. You will then arrive to \AppData\Roaming, from where you may move up one directory, and then enter the parallel (in relation to \Roaming) folder \Local. In \AppData\Local\ there is a folder named "HistoryFlight", and if you delete it, the saved high score list is eliminated.

In macOS, go to your user directory (the folder usually named as your username in all lowercase letters), hereafter designated as ~, and you will find a folder by the name of "HistoryFlight" via the following path: ~\Library\Application Support\Epic\HistoryFlight. If you delete this folder, the saved high score list is eliminated.

Legal notes

All rights of the game History Flight are reserved to the authors, and the copyright is reserved to © 2020 Aifoskela AB.

Audio credits:

generic prop_start(8.395) Jillian Callahan
Licensed under Creative Commons: Sampling Plus 1.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/

generic prop_idle Jillian Callahan
Licensed under Creative Commons: Sampling Plus 1.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/

Sunshine Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Engine:

History Flight uses the Unreal® Engine. Unreal® is a trademark or registered trademark of Epic Games, Inc. in the United States of America and elsewhere.
Unreal® Engine, Copyright 1998 – 2020, Epic Games, Inc. All rights reserved.