Flight Control from the Australian developer, Firemint is a game with a very simple concept – land aircraft while keeping them from crashing into each other.

A quick look at almost any screenshot will tell you pretty much all you need to know about the game mechanics. You’re presented with an aerial view of an airport and different aircraft appear from off screen (slow jets, fast jets, light aircraft and helicopters) which you direct by simply dragging your finger from the plane, around the screen to their respective landing spot. If any planes bumps into each other it’s game over. Easy eh? You’d be surprised.

Plan? What plan?
Within this simple scenario there’s enough scope to keep you entertained for hours. I found some of that time was spent trying to come up with a strategy. I thought a good plan would be to direct all the aircraft clockwise around the screen to their landing points but then almost as soon as I started getting this working a new plane would appear at just the wrong place and lead to some mad scrambling to avoid a mid air collision. It’s not long before any idea of strategy goes out of the window and you give in to the spontaneous nature of the game. This isn’t a fault by the way, it’s the cause of the panicky fun it produces.

How well you do can, too often, depend on random chance. For example, my best score is currently 61 aircraft landed (not bad considering a standard decent score tends to be around 30) and as much as I’d like to claim it was down to great skill on my part, in fact it’s more to do with where and when the aircraft appear on screen. As often as you get a good score from good luck, bad luck can lead to a couple of planes appearing very close to each other at the edge of the screen and collide before you get the chance to control them. A minor tweak to the code to ensure more separation between new planes would sort this problem out.

Making progress
As addictive as it is, there’s very little progression in the game. What you see and do in the first minute of playing is what you’ll still be seeing and doing many hours later. The challenge increases purely by escalating the player’s workload. Aircraft appear more rapidly as time goes on and it very soon becomes frantic.

This lack of change isn’t necessarily a fault in a game (it’s never hurt the popularity of Chess after all) and while it’s certainly great fun as it is, it would be nice to have a little variation. I notice the developer’s promising new airports and aircraft for future updates which will help but my suggestions would include adding different weather conditions (clouds, fog, snow) and perhaps controlling the aircraft’s height (as shown by their shadows on the ground) as well as their route – double tapping the planes to switch them between two heights would make for greater variation at later stages of the game. Perhaps the player could also be handed control of takes offs too? If I was the designer, I’d keep the game as it is now until the player reaches a certain score, 35 or so. Then I’d add these new elements one at a time, increasing the challenge and life of the game.

A very minor point but I found the music didn’t really match the style of the game. It’s difficult to put my finger on why but it just didn’t gel for me. Although the music ends after a minute or two of playing, I’d prefer the option to turn it off, leaving the other sound effects playing. Luckily you’re given the option to turn off in-game sounds allowing you to play your own music in the background.

At the time of writing there is no free version of the app to allow users to try before buying. This seems particularly odd to me as the game’s so addictive, I’m sure anyone who gets a taste of it will be falling over themselves to buy the full game. Perhaps a version that lasts only 5 minutes and doesn’t display the score would provide a good taste of the game while giving enough incentive to upgrade? Hopefully the developer will get around to producing a LITE version before long.

Verdict
The simple and intuitive gameplay makes great use of the unique capabilities of the device. A nice visual style together with a typical game length of around 10 minutes also contribute to making this a great diversion. My only real concern is longevity. If the developer can add new features to keep the challenge fresh, then despite a couple of minor niggles, Flight Control will be a near perfect iPhone game.

Flight Control
Version reviewed: V1.0
Category: Games
Company: Firemint
Current Price: £0.59
Works on: iPhone & iPod Touch