The Gray Gamers

I am not a fan of time management games. There are a lot of genres I like, this has not been one of them.

Someone suggested I try Airport Mania, so I did it as a favour to them. They did me a favour.

Put out by South Winds, this little gem breaks the time management game mold with an excellent interface, good graphics and a few surprises. It isn’t big game company formulaic.

The game came out in 2008 and has remained in the top ten time management games.
I haven’t seen a bad review for Airport Mania First Flight, it’s just different enough to remain engaging.

The game is not just time management, there is strategy involved and I think that’s one of the things that hooked me. You go to a friendly flight school tutorial to learn to be an air traffic controller, and you’re off. 

The object of the game is to land planes, load, unload, fuel and do maintenance and send them on their way. The quicker the turn around time at each airport the more points you get. Points help you upgrade, and that is part of the key to the draw of Airport Mania. New runways, gates, defoggers, VIP parking, inflight movies and food you as airport manager install to help the planes happy  draw you deeper into play.

The graphics are great, and although I’m not inclined to use the word cute, the soundtrack, the planes and the scenery at each airport level have style. As the airport manager you can also get points by getting the planes landing and taking off earlier,  which gets upgrades and rather than be annoying, it’s really fun. Tee upgrades you choose matter, and increases the strategic intrigue.

It is one of the most friendly games I’ve played, if you have never tried a time management game this one is a great starter.  How you manage your environment adds interesting complexity to the game. Don’t let the cartoonish cute planes fool you, this game isn’t just child’s play. What you buy or don’t buy to upgrade your airports adds to the strategic element of what a premise that seems simple., keeping planes happy and your airport running smoothly.  As the capacity of  my airports grew I found myself even more challenged.

Again, it’s little things (called easter eggs in game talk)  in each level background like a balloon or zeppelin or chatter from a building that can make you smile. Every once in awhile while you’re busy managing your traffic, along comes a plane needing special attention such Air Force One, a plane with a medical transplant or with a pregnant lady needing to land now. Part of the strategy of keeping the planes happy is not just landing and take off on time or ahead of schedule. If you get swamped with operation management, giving your guests some food or a movie can put smiles and green bars back while you scramble to untangle the potential mess.

You can go back and play a level you feel you didn’t do well one, which suits my temperament.
If a standard or master score isn’t good enough, aiming for expert will keep you happily engaged.
There is a trophy room which has some unusual awards and medals to shoot for, and has already had  me heading back to improve my strategy.
There are 8 different kinds of planes and they each have their own temperament.
There are 8 airports, 84 levels and I keep seeing something about paper airplanes.

As an added strategy, co-ordinating planes of the same colours to the same gates to create chain combos earns a more points.

Casual games are supposed to be fun, and if you are a hard core gamer waiting for Assassins Creed 2 to come out, well this isn’t your game.  If you like  casual well executed game play,  crisp graphics and a few extra this or that in the environment to capture your attention and you like to play to self-challenge, give Airport Mania First Flight a try. Some games in a hectic industry stand up to time and a crowded field, this is one of them.

If South Winds comes out with an Airport Mania sequel, I’m in.

Good bang for your buck.

Tips and Tricks: Reflexive Arcade has  the spoilers on how to win all the 21 awards.

Windows OS:  2000,  XP,  Vista
Memory: 256 MB DirectX: 7.0 or later
CPU: P 1.0GHz Video: 16MB Video Card
Mac
Mobile: IPhone, IPod touch