App Review: Pocket Planes

This game by Mobage follows the same pixel goodness that we saw with Tiny Tower.

Lets start playing.

We are at first greeted with a tutorial to get us used to the controls. They are a bit hard to pick up on at first but after playing the game for a little bit you learn fast. The tutorial is quick and does not go very in depth at the start of the game but it does wet your toes to the style of game play  You start out by loading a plane with either people, cargo, or both. Certain planes can hold more than others so you want to choose who you take wisely.  

                         
When you have chosen who is going on your plane you press the take off button in the bottom of the screen and you are shown a map. Airports that you have available to you are solid white, while ones you are yet to own are slightly transparent.

When you pick what town to send your Bitizen to, the plane begins to fly. You can then switch to another plane by clicking the arrow keys on either side of the screen or see a list by clicking the picture of the plane in the bottom right hand corner. There is also an option to "Tweet" where your plane is going, but this seems very annoying and gimmicky to me. 

As you watch your plane fly coins and Bitizen Buxs will fly by the fly, if you tap them then you get the bonus associated with the item. Buxs can be used to purchase in game extras, or speed up a process or several other actions to make your game play easier. You can always purchase more though an in-app purchase, but they are not required to play the game.

When all of the planes are in flight to one place or another you can exit the game and wait until the time next to the flight runs out. This app does have the option for notifications when this does happen. I have noticed that it totally restarts the game so I assume that it will not use up much battery life at all. 

This is the Menu screen and as you can see, there is alot of information here. We can do everything from sell on the Market to check out Logs or buy new parts for our planes. This is also where the Bank is in order to convert Bux into Coins. We can use "MobaCoins" to actually purchase the Bux. The current rate is 100 MobaCoins for $0.99 which can then be turned into about 20 Bux. (With 1 MobaCoin left over for some reason)

Link: Download