Airport Mania: First Flight is a great multi-tasking time management game. The game consists of 8 different airports with 84 total levels. You are basically an air traffic controller in charge of landing planes and getting them back in the air full with new passengers headed to a new destination. In the early levels of the game this task is fairly simple as you get your feet wet with landing a couple of planes and guiding them to their gates. The game gets more and more complicated as the levels progress. The number of planes needing to land and disembark passengers will increase and some will land with mechanical problems and empty fuel tanks. If a plane needs maintenance or gas, it will tell you in a chat bubble that will appear above it. At that point, you will need to navigate the plane to either the garage or the fuel station (sometimes both) then back to the gate to embark more passengers for take off. You'll need to do all of this while new planes are circling waiting to land and unload.
Points are given for landing and disembarking passengers. The faster you do this, the more points you will acquire. Bonus points are also given if you can navigate your plane to the matching color coded gate. This may sound simple but give it a try with several planes circling the airport and several on the ground needing the garage and refueling. I was hard pressed landing all of the planes and just getting them back in the air after they had been repaired and refueled. If they happened to be at the same colored gate? Well, that was indeed a bonus! One of the cool features of this game is that at the end of each level you can use your acquired points for various upgrades. You can purchase additional layover spaces, runways, and even in flight entertainment for your passengers (this will help keep your planes from getting angry and flying away to another airport). These items will come in handy for completing future levels. Be sure to choose your upgrades carefully. They could make on break you on your next level.
The graphics are simple and the planes were drawn in a way that slightly reminded me of the characters in the movie Cars with eyes larger that life and smiles almost as big as the planes themselves. The animation is smooth except for on the load screens, but who cares about those as long as they occur in a timely manner, right?? The music is actually pretty nice and relaxing. It has an upbeat jazzy feel to it without being annoying. The sound effects are right on target as well. Airplanes make the appropriate landing sound and cash registers ring as you accrue points. You can adjust the volume of both in the Options menu or simply turn all off by flipping the vibrate switch on your phone.
Game controls are fairly intuitive. Simply touch a plane to select it and then touch the runway where you want it to land. Once it lands, send it to the appropriate colored gate (if you're so lucky) or to a layover space if all the gates are full. I did have a few problems with the touch controls. A few times when I touched the planes or one of the various locations (runway, garage, etc) a little red X would pop up as if I made an invalid selection. This proved to be a little frustrating especially when my finger had already moved on to deal with the next plane. The errors occurred too few and far in between to cause concern. Perhaps my fingers are just too fat! Overall you'll have little to no difficulty landing those planes with their precious cargo and sending them back off in the wild blue yonder. Who knows? You may be lucky enough to land the President, find a helicopter full of cash, or unlock the secret paper airplane mode.
Airport Mania is designed so that anyone of virtually any age can succeed in this game. For 99 cents, you can't beat the entertainment value of this app. Who says an airport can't be a fun experience??