Tiny Plane Review: Flying the endless skies on Windows Phone

Tiny Plane for Windows Phone

The endless running game genre has become increasingly popular on smartphones in the last few years. The about popular entry by far – Jetpack Joyride – really mixes flying with running, and to great consequence. Only suppose you lot desire a pure countless flying game without all that fancy footwork? Then Nokia and Chillingo's Tiny Plane is the but game in town.

Created by tiny Canadian developer PowPow Games (who also fabricated Dream Track Nation), Tiny Airplane can't compare to Jetpack Joyride's sheer telescopic and abundance of personality. But it packs a certain indie charm and some challenging gameplay that still go far worth a wait.

Furry flyers

Tiny Plane

Tiny Airplane lacks a cute story (or any story), but the premise is ambrosial plenty. You don't just wing an airplane in this game – a dog sits at the aeroplane's controls.

Instead of flight for distance, you're flying for score here, just they're essentially the same thing. Items don't even affect your score, oddly enough. The score just increases the farther you fly along. They might as well call it distance instead of score since nothing else affects it.

Flight controls

Tiny Plane

Since this is an countless flyer, the game handles acceleration automatically. Players but demand to worry virtually steering. The game lacks a tutorial or instructions of whatsoever sort, so you lot'll probably fumble around a fleck as yous acquire the controls. Touching the left side of the screen points the airplane'southward nose up, while the correct side points the nose downward. You tin besides contrary the directions in the options screen.

Tiny Plane is a challenging game, 1 reason being fuel management. Equally the airplane flies around, its fuel meter constantly ticks downward. Let it run out and yous'll plummet to the basis, probably crashing. Landing on a track refuels the airplane. Runways are abundant and you lot can't crash into them – no matter how fast you bear on downward, you lot'll land and begin to refuel safely. Be sure to accept off before reaching the end of the runway though, or y'all'll crash into the landscape.

Threats

Tiny Plane

Other than crashing, Tiny Airplane pilots will face three chief hazards. An exclamation point at the edge of the screen warns of their impending arrival.

The game must take place near Seattle considering storm clouds pop upward most often. Fly into 1 or even NEAR it and information technology will sap coins from you. That's right, this game actually steals coins from players. You could lose 30 coins from a cloud, which hurts because coins are slow to come past. The fact that the surrounding radius of a cloud drains coins as well just makes things worse. You'll learn to avoid them for the nearly part, merely sometimes it can't be helped.

Side by side up, floating mines will destroy your aeroplane if touched. Because individual mines are small, they usually don't post too much of a threat.

Rockets only announced on Normal and Hardcore difficulties and prove the deadliest threat. They show upwardly behind your plane instead of from the front. The shield power-up offers no protection confronting rockets (boo) and they home in on your plane (double boo), and so they almost always spell death. They Tin can be dodged if your plane is going fast enough and you move at but the right fourth dimension though.

Items

Tiny Plane

Pilots can collect several items every bit they soar through the skies, and multiple items will affect the plane meantime. Not all are helpful though…

Gas: Rather than refilling your gas tank, this collectible stops it from depleting for a brusque time. It lets you fly a bit higher instead of hovering almost the runways so much.
Weight: A power-down that drags you down toward the footing, mayhap causing a crash.
Balloon: The opposite of a weight, the airship pulls yous up. Probably a bit less unsafe but still not good.
Magnet: Everyone loves a money magnet. The downside is that coins are and so scarce that a magnet volition often run out before you can even collect any coins with it. Comparatively, Jetpack Joyride always makes a batch of coins announced when the actor collects a vehicle, so you never feel like the vehicle is wasted.
Shield: Puts a shield on front end of the airplane that will protect it from exactly 1 mine. Meet two mines and y'all're still toast. I really wish the game would betoken when magnets and shields are about to run out.
Coin Bubble: This uncommon item causes a field of coins to appear in place of the usual hazards. Get lucky enough to combine it with a magnet and you'll rake in the cha-ching.
Plane change: On Normal and Hard difficulties, y'all can temporarily switch to a dissimilar plane with this detail. It's not bad early only eventually yous'll want to stick with your unlocked plane.

Coins and planes

Tiny Plane

As with endless running games, the other goal besides reaching greater distances is to collect equally many coins as you can. The merely thing to spend them on is planes. There are 10 different planes to purchase, each with a unlike issue such as immunity to weights or lower fuel consumption. The only ones you should actually buy, however are the plane that doubles coins and the one that causes missiles not to appear. Those ii will bear witness most useful Achievement-wise.

Flight turbulence

Tiny Plane

A few more complaints:

Tiny Airplane has some pretty parallax backgrounds, but with but 1 unchanging background, that beauty quickly wears thin. The game badly needs more backgrounds or at least dissimilar palettes for the background.
Unless your aeroplane is moving at loftier speeds, the camera is zoomed in far too close. The combination of boring steering and claustrophobic view make it way also easy to miss coins and items.
When you buy a aeroplane, the game returns to the main menu instead of providing visual confirmation of the purchase. That's some rough UI piece of work at that place.
The Windows Phone version lacks the iOS game's online multiplayer mode.

Achievements

Almost of the Achievements are pretty reasonable once y'all go the hang of the game. The grindiest one requires players to accumulate 40,000 gold. Given how scarce aureate can be (not to mention those thunderstorms), it will take several hours (and the Double Coin plane) to assemble 40K.

The hardest and nearly unpleasant Accomplishment is undoubtedly '10,000 Points.' To actually reach that distance/points goal, y'all can either play on Kids or Normal difficulty. The Kids route is safer but excruciatingly wearisome – it volition take over an hour of conscientious flight to get. Planes fly much faster in Normal manner, just and so you lot take missiles to argue with. Since missiles are normally undodgable, you lot'd need to purchase the expensive No Missiles plane before trying to achieve 10K.

Overall Impression

Virtually all Nokia published Xbox games have a 2 dollar markup over their iOS versions, which is usually understandable given the smaller user base of Windows Phone. But Tiny Plane but doesn't take that much content. Information technology should really toll a dollar like the iOS game, especially given this version's missing multiplayer.

Pricing aside, players who have knocked out Jetpack Joyride and Gravity Guy 2 might desire to requite this flyer a hazard. It's a fun game once you look past the rough edges.

Tiny Plane – Nokia Exclusive – Windows Phone 7 or viii – MB - $ii.99 – Store Link

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