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Platform:\u00a0 <\/strong>iPhone\/Android<\/em> I don’t really remember us doing anything dramatic like having the planes crash or anything like that.\u00a0 Just that every now and then, Stu would look at his watch and it would be time to fly one of the planes from one room of the house to another.\u00a0 We did this diligently for some time.<\/p>\n Depending on how your brain is wired, this can be either a really cool airport simulation or it can be as exciting as watching paint dry.\u00a0 I used to think I was in a pretty exclusive club of people who would find ‘Airports’ exciting but Nimblebit, the iOS software developer of the popular Tiny Tower<\/em> game, has developed a game for the iPhone and iPad which is pretty much the digital version of this game.<\/p>\n Pocket Planes<\/em> is a charming looking pixel-art game where you gradually build and expand your airport empire starting with a couple of pint-sized airports and a handful of planes that seat just one or two travellers.\u00a0 From humble beginnings, you amass your fortune, add new planes to your fleet, purchase and upgrade new locations and customize your planes to suit your style.\u00a0 But mostly…you just watch planes fly from one airport to another in a completely non-interactive fashion.\u00a0 It’s become one of my favourite games of the year.\u00a0 Even better, it doesn’t cost a cent.\u00a0 Pocket Planes<\/em> is free to play.<\/p>\n I like what Nimblebit has done with Pocket Planes<\/em>.\u00a0 The game isn’t really designed to be played for any sustained period of time.\u00a0 Rather, you set your planes on their journey and then leave the game for a couple of hours or whenever you next have some free time.\u00a0 I’ve fallen into a routine of playing this game for 5 minutes at a time at three stages of the day.\u00a0 In the morning before I go to work, when I get home in the evening and then before I go to bed.\u00a0 I’ve expanded my fleet so I’ve got eleven planes running flight paths that take anywhere from half an hour to over two hours.\u00a0 It’s low maintenance and thats how I like it.<\/p>\n Of course, if that was all there was to it, then I think the game would become stale rather quickly.\u00a0 Fortunately, there is plenty to give Pocket Planes<\/em> longevity.\u00a0 There are continously updating ‘challenges’ that refresh every couple of days that give you a particular destination to focus on.\u00a0 For example there might be an earthquake in San Fransisco so you get bonus currency for flying medical officers there.\u00a0 Or other times you might be rewarded with a unique plane that you can’t purchase through the ingame marketplace.\u00a0 The game encourages you to join an online community when you do this.\u00a0 I participated under the #SomethingAwful crew and generally reaped pretty good rewards.<\/p>\n Pocket Planes<\/em> is a very simple game at heart but its something that wouldn’t really work on a traditional video game console.\u00a0 The bit-sized nature of its playing mechanics make it ideally suited to iPhones and iPads where you can access the game quickly, fiddle around for a couple of minutes, then get back to whatever it was that you were doing.\u00a0 I don’t know how long I’ll keep playing this game but for now, I’m happy watching my level bump up every two or three days and playing ‘Airports’ like I used to do when I was a kid.<\/p>\n You start the game by operating one of the smaller airports in the world. I went with Kuching<\/p><\/div>\n You can customize the paintjob on your planes and give them names. Most of my planes are modelled on the Royal Brunei Airlines fleet.<\/p><\/div>\n I appreciate Nimblebit’s dedication to making you laugh. The game has its own social network called BitBook that has some entertaining twitter-style updates.<\/p><\/div>\n
\nDeveloper:\u00a0 <\/strong><\/strong>Nimblebit<\/em>
\nPublisher:\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong> Nimblebit<\/em><\/p>\nW<\/span>hen I was a kid, maybe four or five year old, I remember playing ‘Airports’ with my big brother Stu.\u00a0 He used to have these miniature scale model airplanes and we’d set them up in various rooms of the house.\u00a0 According to a schedule planned out by Stu, we would fly the plane from one room to another, where it would land at its new destination.\u00a0 That was pretty much the extent of the ‘game.’<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/pocketplanes002.jpg\" "\\"pocketplanes002\\"")
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