Flight Control hits #1 on App Store

Mike Bantick
Tuesday, 17 March 2009 09:42

Opinion and Analysis

What is the number one paid application on several of the iPhone and iPod Touch app stores?  Australian developer Firemint’s addictive Flight Control that's what.

According to the good folk at local (for me at least, in Melbourne, Australia) developer Firemint, their first self published iPhone and iPod Touch game Flight Control is hitting the big time.

Amongst the crowd of free and pay for applications in the iTunes App Store, Flight Control has hit number one paid for app on the Australian store, as well as in the Netherlands.

In flight control players take air traffic control into their own hands, in a game reminiscent of the days of Game&Watch.  Games that ran on the premise that eventually you will fail.

With a landing strip overview planes launch themselves onto the field of play from any edge, players take control of each plane, or later on helicopters, by touching them and dragging a flight path to the safety of land.

Red planes land on the long strip, yellow on the short with a helipad provided for choppers.  As aircraft land, kitsch 50’s style superlatives fill the air, Jolly Good, Smashing, Good Show and so on.

The challenge is to not allow aircraft to collide.  As the number of vehicles in the air increases, and the speed differences of each craft comes into play, this becomes a difficult management and finger wearing task.

Eventually, through not being efficient, or simply a lack of peripheral vision, an air disaster will occur, prompting the game end. 

It will also prompt a poke of the retry button as you pass the railway station you were supposed to get off at.