
The money you make from ticket sales can be used to purchase a “whole bunch” (that’s a technical term) of upgrades. Now Boarding also automatically saves your progress at the end of each month: take that, Spore. Also, certain airports are more popular at different times of the year (like New Orleans for Mardi Gras) and will experience increased demand. You won’t directly earn any extra money by delivering passengers faster, but good service at specific airports will result in more business. You can also design routes to fly through bonus clouds that may grant faster fly times, happier clients, or money. You are given a time limit, but as long as you aren’t forgetting people or making each flight stop at four or five destinations, then getting everyone delivered in time is fairly easy.

All of the operations at non-hub airports are automated, so all the passengers (or as many as can fit on the plane) will be loaded on and flown to the next airport in the queue you set (the final stop is always the hub). These actions are all done with the mouse and the targets are fairly large and easy to click on, although selecting a moving passenger can be almost impossible.

You do this by placing passengers on planes, making a route for the plane consisting of one or more stops, placing the plane on the taxiway, and then taking landing planes to a gate. In Now Boarding, you move airline passengers to their destinations to make the aforementioned fat stacks of cash. Now Boarding has enough content to keep you busy for quite a while, and with a randomized passenger order, replays will be different. Survival mode ups the difficulty to the extreme, and is intended for those who have completed the game fully.
#BUY NOW BOARDING GAME FREE#
Once you have completed the first episode, a continuous free play mode becomes unlocked, allowing you to play in a particular location for an essentially infinite period of time, rather than the once-per-month time frame utilized by the career mode. Now Boarding does a great job of providing very specific goals (like buy a hot dog stand) to meet in each episode, basically suggesting appropriate things to purchase to improve your service as you progress through the game: it’s a tutorial without being a tutorial (although there is a 10-second tutorial as well). You will progressively unlock more airports and other amenities by earning fat stacks of cash. The career mode is where you’ll be initially spending most of your time, as you will traverse five different episodes, one each for a different region of the United States and Europe. Once you fire up the game, you’ll notice three modes of play. The bottom line is that Now Boarding will run in Windows, Linux, and Mac, so that’s cool. Apparently, it’s an Internet platform designed to run desktop applications on multiple operating systems, kind of like JavaScript.
#BUY NOW BOARDING GAME INSTALL#
The first thing you’ll notice about Now Boarding is that you need to install Adobe Air, something I had never heard of until now. Overall, Now Boarding looks and sounds great, and it does this without having to resort to 3-D effects. Also, it has appropriate sound effects, such as the “fasten seat belt” sound, and nearly constant eruptions of jubilation when people meet others who are going to the same destination. Now Boarding features some great music that fits the retro-airport feel of the game. I like the overall style of the game, and this extends to the sound design as well. Everything is color-coded and navigating through the game is very straightforward. While the game is entirely in 2-D, there is a nice style associated with the title, utilizing cartoon-like graphics in an effective manner. One thing Now Boarding has going for it is a successful theme. This particular title lets you manage an airline by routing flights, eventually upgrading your operation to a more complex (and more profitable) status. Because of this, I like to highlight titles by independent developers, instead of the casual game “factories.” My unending crusade leads me today to Now Boarding, a game residing in the click-management category I am apparently fond of, considering the frequency at which I review similar titles. You could devote an entire review site solely dedicated to casual games, as it seems like a new one comes out every day. What say you? A click management game with a number of features designed for longevity and efficiency: 7/8


The Not So Good: Can get repetitive like most games in the genre The Good: Intuitive interface, concrete goals, nice graphical style, lots of purchasable items that impact the gameplay, AI assistants are helpful without being controlling Now Boarding, developed and published by Gabob.
