Sky Empire: Airline Manager

I love airline games like this but there is 2 things I don’t like about this one. First is that the game is WAY to easy I do the hardest everything and it’s still so easy. The last thing is that the airport ratings are very inconsistent. Overall a great game for a beginner in this type of game or have a hour or 2 to spend.

There's a lot to like about Sky Empire. It has a clear, clean, straightforward design. You and your competitors each start with a pile of cash to start an airline: buy or lease planes (based on real models available in a given year--you can start as early as 1960), arrange seats in different classes, then use the map to assign them to routes anywhere in the world, using data estimating demand for cities and routes by type of traveller, and set prices for each class of ticket. I really like the balance between detail--you can even set budget options for advertising, investment in staff training and passenger comfort--and simplicity--there's no useless in-app purchases like customizing your logo, no locking regions of the map, no animation showing planes moving around, etc. Once you've set your routes and prices, you tap Next and and instantly a month passes: you can see how much money you earned or lost on each route, and even look at exactly what your competitors are doing by selecting them in the dashboard. Buy or lease new planes if you want, adjust your prices and routes, and repeat for the next month. Sky Empire does feel incomplete as a game, however. Even with stiff competition--in the couple games I've started so far, all the AI airlines increase their net worth by between 40% to 100% per year(!)--it's not clear what you're playing for. If you can stay profitable, the game lets you continue, month after month. Maybe scenarios would be a good addition: e.g. bring Pan Am back to profitability, or bring a low-cost European airline in 2000 to the top of the market by 2020, etc. Or some goals: reach $1 billion in market value in 5 years. There are a few small issues also. It's easy to look at any available airport or route on the map to see what the demand is like there, but there's no obvious way to filter or compare them. I don't think the difficulty levels affect the strength of the AI airlines, just your initial budget. Still, it's such a huge improvement over the other airline games out there, too many of which are drudgery; bloated graphics covering over a time-sucking adware or in-app purchase wasteland.