Fluglotse Review

Fluglotse is German for “air traffic controller� and that is exactly what you have to do in this game, control air traffic. While the presentation is about as basic as it gets this can be quite an addictive action puzzle game.

You see the area you have to control from above, planes move on a fixed grid. You select planes by tapping them and can then give them commands. For example you can order them to turn clockwise or anticlockwise 45° at the next point of the grid they reach. There are five places plus the airport that new planes can come from, every plane has a target where it has to leave.

Of course planes do not fly on a flat surface, they also have a height. They enter at 5000 m and have to exit at 4000 m and they have to go down to 100 m to land. You can order them to change their height but it will take some time until they reach it. You can also use the possibility to change the height to prevent crashes.

It takes some time until you understand how to play and you should really read the help but once you have got the hang of it, the game can be fun for quite some time. In fact, it can be very addicting and if there is a lot going on on the screen, you do not notice the minutes going by. There is always something to do and it takes planning and skill to prevent crashes later in the game when there are lots of planes at once.

The whole point of the game is to get a highscore. Crashes and near crashes get you minus points while planes that have successfully been brought to their destination add positively to your score. There are a surprising number of different game modes which adds to the time you can play the game.

As mentioned at the beginning of the review the presentation is very basic. This is not a problem, in fact it makes the game very clear, and it is easy to distinguish things. But still additional landscapes, different levels, a career mode or something of that sort would have been nice. The sound more or less consists of annoying bleeps which is exactly the right thing to warn you about a collision but some atmospheric music could enhance the game.

In the beginning, I thought that Fluglotse would be a boring game to review because the presentation put me off. I was wrong. I had quite some fun playing this game and you should try the demo to see if you like it, too. Just remember to read the help or you will have difficulties to accomplish anything.