Air traffic controller
Flight Control (2009, Iphone / DS / Ipad) and Harbour Master (2009, Iphone / Ipad) are two great games that really work both on the iphone and the ipad. I’m struggling to work out from whence Flight Control sprung – the game style immediately feels familiar yet I’m not sure I’ve ever played a similar game before.
In both games the basic idea is simple. Planes (in FC) or boats (in HM) arrive onscreen, and your job is to trace routes for them onto airstrips or into harbour berths. If the planes or boats collide it’s game over. Harbor Master (we call them harbours with a ‘u’ in the UK) has an extra dimension in that the boats have cargo that needs to be dropped off and the boats then need steering back out of the harbour again. Each game lasts about five minutes, but the temptation to click ‘play again’ is absolutely enormous. I have to really ration myself on both games.
It’s just quite an ingenious measure of skill. You trace your routes for each vehicle, many of which move at different speeds, and use your skills of judgement to avoid collisions. Rather than simply moving to avoid collisions you are predicting the lack of them. Speed of thought is crucial as the rate of the game increases. And you have the plain old panic moments as you act to avoid disaster, and rethink on your feet.
I’m trying to think what this is like. I suppose in Tetris you place your blocks with half a mind on what you are trying to do in the next few moves. In speed chess you play to a grander strategy, and use principles to try and avoid enough of the mistakes that can happen when you play fast. At speed you cannot be perfect, so it’s a measure of how you play in imperfect circumstances.
I think Flight Control is slightly the better game because it is a purer experience. You don’t have to fiddle with getting planes out again. Harbour Master’s worst feature is the whirlpool that wanders around to introduce a random element to the game, but these games just don’t need that extra factor – it frustrates but adds nothing to the game. There’s already the random factor of what boat or plane appears where on the screen.
Like my other favourite games on the iphone, I dismissed these games at first as decent time-wasters. A year later and the games simply haven’t lost their lustre – there is something very special going on here.
Among the lauded iPhone games, landing planes just didn’t click with me. Somehow, I never got better at lining up planes with the runways, and constantly missing by a narrow margin frustrated me into quitting. For those with the magic touch, I can see the appeal, though.