Firstly to the Devs congratulations on releasing a great platform. I signed up to reddit a long time ago to post a comment and only watched ever since. I have played the game a bit now but have read a lot of the reviews. Lots of ideas and I have a few below.
Firstly though on the positives. It is a great platform. Many of the reviews complain about elements that are fixable and perfectly understandable at an Alpha stage. I find the ones about the artwork a bit strange given you should know what to expect from that at the outset. But, notwithstanding that, I actually quite like the artwork. It is simplistic and does what it needs to on the tin. Die hard tycooners do not play tycoon games for artwork.
The passenger side of things I think is also modelled very well and it seems to flow quite smoothly. There are some niggles. But it is understandable at this stage. The aviation side works well. All in all the platform is great and hard work has gone in to it. Reviews berating the cover in my opinion should be ignored and by cover I mean anything you can expect by looking at screenshots and the videos. I like the flightplanner aspect and I like the approach to contracts. It is novel and gives real control.
Now to some of the negative reviews.
I can understand the concerns about playability once you have turned the first few planes around. Also I read a pretty fair review that said once you have built your airport…that is it. I do agree. But I would still play it.
It made me cast my mind back to theme hospital and Rollercoaster tycoon 1. They were level games that were tycoon focussed and while many may disagree I think the Devs should seriously consider this as a way to go. The other alternative is to consider a tech or development tree. Almost a bit like civilisation or prison architect. You could have to meet certain requirements before things become available and those requirements could be a profit level of x…serve 20000 passengers…turn 500 aircraft around or perhaps be a CEO for 10 years. There is huge potential here but it needs to be done early. The crux is…you need to make a game difficult to keep it interesting. Don’t limit creativity but control development with goals.
My last paragraph was important because more content can be added to this game. A lot more. Some of it is already planned and I don’t think it needs to be available to every aspiring new CEO. If people.want that…a sandbox mode will do it for them. But create a game out of the content and make people work for it in the game.
To put the above in to reality I built a 4 stand airport in to something profitable with 1 million remaining after 3 game days. Easy.
The final part of this missive is my own personal opinion.
I think the game has done an excellent job of founding the platform for an airport game to build upon. There is one infuriating bug for me and some things that should be addressed for early game improvement.
The annoying bug is for whatever reason…the time a GA wants to sit at a stand does not show in the request. I will file a bug report.
The improvement for me is the airside and turnaround just doesn’t quite feel immersive enough. I think for unconnected stands…someone should deliver a set of steps…you should have to buy a set of steps and a set of steps should be expensive. The aircraft maintenance/ramp agents should drive to the stand…or a walking penalty should be applied. A ramp agent should plug in the generator which is on the artwork and I also think a checker vehicle would be realistic…the outside airside environment just needs a bit more for the early game. I know there is more to come. But for me…thats the only lacking bit from the early game dynamic.
The devs response has been amazing on the bugs and they should continue to squash them. But i think commercially for them and to create something of a challenge for the player some of the advice may be well heeded. It is down to them to decide what to do with it.
Congratulations on the game though and I look forward to seeing it develop.