Management Sims are a very interesting type of game. It’s a very niche genre and therefore has to accomplish some very specific things in order to appeal to its target audience. It has to provide enjoyable gameplay, create a feeling of ownership for the player, and above all else inspire a sense of meaningful progression. The glue that holds these components together, is the look and feel of the game. Airport CEO manages to present a game that checks most of those boxes in spite of some annoying setbacks, but only barely.
A Terminal Tutorial
One of the most important things about any management sim is its tutorial. Even the most complex of game mechanics can be learned and enjoyed if presented through a tutorial that can keep up. However, if this essential balance tips too heavily to one side or the other, you either end up confused if the tutorial is insufficient, or bored if the tutorial is overbearing. An overbearing tutorial can usually be skipped, but an insufficient tutorial abandons the player to figure things out for themselves. Airport CEO’s tutorial, unfortunately, falls into the insufficient category.
The tutorial is centered around a phone overlay that slides in and out of the left side of your screen. The phone gives you objectives to complete, and provides some instruction on how to complete them. This in itself is fine, but completing the objectives it presents often depends on being able to do other things not covered by the tutorial correctly. There are also times when you follow the tutorial’s steps as exactly as you can, but won’t work until you demolish everything and start over following the exact steps for a second time. You’ll likely have to start your airport over from scratch a few times to get through all the initial steps without wasting a ton of your starting cash on rebuilding broken sections of your fledgling airport.
That’s not including all the very specific requirements for how your airport needs to be laid out in order for everything to work and connect properly. All of which are either entirely forgotten or very unclear in the tutorial. If Airport CEO would give new players a starting airport with some simple suggested layouts, infinite money and time, and a clearer tutorial, it would eliminate a lot of what makes especially the early stages of this game frustrating.
It’s all coming together
If you manage to get past the frustrating early stages of Airport CEO, you’ll find that completing a new runway, terminal, or other large projects can be quite satisfying. Seeing everything flow together without any pulsing red warnings feels great, especially because you’ll encounter those a lot early on.
Once you get a complete section of your airport up and running, taking some airline contracts and scheduling some flights will get you your first income, and bring you the joy of seeing airplanes land and take off from your creation. It’s great to see all the pieces working together properly, and to see your passengers and staff going about their business.
After that, it’s all about rinsing and repeating with some added upgrades and new buildings and features here and there. There’s definitely more to do and build as you go, and seeing your airport grow from a grassy field to a sprawling, finely-tuned machine feels pretty good. The game feels like it hits its stride in the mid to late game when you have a lot of the more tedious tasks automated and you are able to spend time designing and building a new project without interruption.
Looks aren’t everything… but they are something
A lot of people who would be interested in this game might not care as much about the looks of this type of game as its gameplay and progression, but most people would agree that if you’re building something up from scratch, you want it to look reasonably good. A somewhat stylized and less realistic look can often work well for games like this where there have to be dozen or hundreds of moving parts at a time.
Airport CEO seems to have gone for this type of look, but it really falls below expectations in enough ways to where the game’s looks take away from rather than add to the experience. The staff and passenger portraits look like they were thrown in as an afterthought. The landscape and buildings are bland, and while there are a few ways to personalize the look of your airport, it’s not really possible to make anything look or feel very appealing.
This is disappointing because they could have really leaned into the top-down 2D look of the game and at least given the game some more personality and more artistic options for players who wanted to make their airport look good in addition to making it run well.
Airport CEO seems to have the bones of a pretty decent management sim, and where there aren’t too many Airport management games, the developers have a good opportunity to continue to polish and grow the game. There’s definitely fun to be had in the game as is, but a player will have to push through the bad tutorial, buggy and unexplained mechanics, and a bland art style in order to find the satisfaction of a well-run and tightly-knit airport.
