Infiltrating the Airship is the fourth installment in the Henry Stickmin series created by PuffballsUnited, originally released as a free Flash game on Newgrounds and later remastered and included as part of The Henry Stickmin Collection on Steam, and it marks a significant turning point in the franchise by expanding the scope of Henry’s adventures beyond simple escape scenarios and into something far more operationally complex and narratively layered. The game picks up after the events of Escaping the Prison and Stealing the Diamond, with Henry having caught the attention of the government, who offer him a deal — help them infiltrate and take down the Toppat Clan, a powerful and well-organized criminal organization that operates out of a massive airship floating high above the ground, and in exchange his criminal record will be wiped clean. This setup immediately gives Infiltrating the Airship a more purposeful narrative foundation than its predecessors, framing Henry’s chaotic decision-making within an actual mission objective that raises the stakes and makes the player feel like the choices being made have genuine consequences beyond simply surviving to the next screen. Like all entries in the Henry Stickmin series the game is structured as an interactive cartoon, presenting players with choice prompts at key moments where they must select from several options to determine how Henry proceeds, with incorrect choices leading to animated failure sequences that are packed with humor, pop culture references, and the kind of creative absurdity that became the series’ signature style. The failure gags in Infiltrating the Airship are among the most inventive and densely packed in the series up to that point, with PuffballsUnited drawing on an enormous range of references from video games, movies, internet culture, and beyond to craft wrong-answer animations that players actively seek out rather than try to avoid, turning the act of failing into its own reward. The airship setting itself is one of the most visually dynamic environments in the series, with different areas of the vessel offering distinct backdrops for Henry’s misadventures, from cargo holds and control rooms to the open sky visible through panoramic windows, and the production design communicates the scale and sophistication of the Toppat Clan’s operation in a way that makes them feel like a genuinely formidable presence rather than a faceless obstacle.
Infiltrating the Airship introduces multiple branching routes that lead to different endings, each of which positions Henry in a different relationship to the Toppat Clan and the government, with some paths seeing him complete his mission faithfully, others seeing him go rogue, and still others resulting in outcomes that are more ambiguous or comedic in nature. These diverging endings are not just cosmetic variations but carry real narrative weight, as the Henry Stickmin Collection later required players to select specific combinations of endings from different games to unlock particular routes through the finale, making the choices in Infiltrating the Airship feel retroactively significant in a way that deepened the series’ replay value enormously.
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The Toppat Clan is fleshed out considerably in this installment, with named members, distinct personalities, and enough presence to make them feel like a proper antagonistic organization rather than a generic collection of guards and obstacles, and the groundwork laid here pays off significantly in the later games. The remastered version refined the visuals, added new content, and polished the overall experience without losing any of the charm or humor that made the original so beloved. Among fans of the series, Infiltrating the Airship is widely regarded as the entry where the Henry Stickmin formula truly hit its stride, balancing comedy, replayability, and narrative ambition in a way that pointed directly toward the heights the series would reach in its final two installments.
