Recently we checked out the airport management game Skyrama from Bigpoint, a free to play browser-based MMO that puts you in charge of your own airport, responsible for handling passengers, constructing buildings, purchasing planes and ultimately acting as an air traffic controller sending planes across the world and landing them at your own airport. The game is a colourful, cutesy and unexpectedly addictive MMO that will definitely appeal to younger audiences but follows that Farmville style gameplay that even older players can find appealing. We took a first look at the game and work their way through the tutorial to see just what it was all about and see if we found the appeal.
As ever logging into the game was a cinch, either quickly creating an account on the fly using your email address or signing in with your Facebook account the easy access portal means players can jump into the game straight away. The first screen we saw was choosing where we wished to build our airport, an overview of a real world map broken down into the continents, as an Englishman I personally chose Europe and was then pleasantly surprised when the continents were broken down into each individual country and so of course we chose the United Kingdom. Upon choosing our airport location we were told that we had access to 3 types of tourist souvenir, though initially we weren’t sure what this meant.
In game we were promptly welcomed by Fiona, our guide to walk us through the tutorial which began with our own airport consisting of a plane hangar bay and the runway to land planes, throughout the tutorial added to our airport with other buildings and decorations and learned what each of them did.
Our first task was to land the plane, a simple enough process is from the Flights tab this it shows us all incoming planes, and players get an on-screen notification when they are queued. Hitting the button allowed the plane to land on our runway, however we had to build a servicing bay before we could finalise the flight and send it back on its way, a simple process which added a small bay that removes the plane from the runway freeing it up for other planes. Servicing a plane consists of pushing a single button which starts a timer to prompts unloading luggage, refuelling, loading passengers and then prepping for take-off, each process taking a few seconds however we could also spend AirCash (the games premium currency) to instantly quick service the plane and send it off.
With each plane that we landed, particularly the CashCow plane we would earn AirCoins, the main in game currency used for buying planes, buildings, decorations and other items. The other main resource we had to gather was Passengers, acquired by building a Passenger Terminal this would give us a constant flow of passengers to disembark on our planes. Sending a plane on a flight was quite interesting as once more we could choose any of the countries in the world to send our flights to and here we noticed that each country had its own souvenirs, something that could be collected each time a plane visits that particular country and is added to the players Collections. Items are grouped in their own categories such as Security Set which requires players to acquire 8x Warning Vest, 10x Shirt, 8x Screwdriver, 12x Medi Kit, and once collected players will earn their reward. Players also gain extra bonuses for fully visiting every country in a single continent as well as a larger award for visiting all the countries in the world.
The game differently has some appeal, it’s quick and easy to get into, very casual and doesn’t require too much thought, however, the constant stream of planes coming and going as well as the instant goal of visiting as many countries as possible we can see could easily hook many players. No doubt by the time they have managed to hit their first milestone of visiting all the countries in a continent they would feel well invested in the game. Added to the fact that players can add Buddies, other players with airports, and gain extra bonuses for sinning flights between them really adds to the social aspects of the game to help other players out.
If you want to know more about Skyrama, click on the "info" button below.
