I don’t know why, but I tend to find a bit of amusement in games that subvert your expectations, especially when on the surface they can appear to be quite unassuming. That’s certainly the case with Airport, which is visually reminiscent of wooden block vehicles and planes your kids could play with. The thing is, by even just the second level you’ll begin to appreciate that this isn’t going to be an easy ride, especially if you’re trying to tackle it alone. 

In the game, your challenge will be managing the flow of traffic around an airport, looking to keep the planes coming in and leaving full of passengers, and preventing people from crashing into each other all over the board. In principle this isn’t too hard, and the early stages generally do a fair job of helping you understand the different sorts of challenges you’ll be contending with. Sometimes it’s all about simply keeping everyone moving. Other times you’ll need to pay more attention to be sure taxis are able to load up at terminals, while you’ll want the other vehicles to keep on moving. What’s tricky is just when you think you may have things down, and perhaps will begin simply anticipating needs ahead of time, you’ll also find that you can take a hit for being too aggressive in that vein as well. So, more often than not, there don’t tend to be too many easy answers, and you’ll need to try to be mindful of as much as you can manage at once.

Since doing this alone can be such a challenge, there’s also the option to play with some friends locally and now even online, though availability will always be a fair question for this sort of feature these days for any indie title. Delegating different buttons out to each person, and allowing them to be more laser-focused on less overall chaos can be effective, but you’ll absolutely need to then do some coordinating as back-ups in one spot can begin to negatively affect others. Success is always attainable as there’s only so much you can do with a limited number of buttons switching barriers or directing traffic, but it’s surprising how elusive positive results can be if you let your concentration slip.

Much like the recently-released Quadroids, Airport is a pretty simple game on paper, but quickly proves to be quite a challenge in practice. Thankfully you won’t have barriers like fiddly controls or inconsistencies, you’ll instead most often prove to be your own greatest enemy. While I wouldn’t say the stages have a typical learning curve, implying that simply with enough repetition you’ll find success, there are absolutely concerns you’ll want and need to prioritize at times as even with a few fender benders and issues you can still pass with flying colors. What I appreciate here is that the threshold for being able to contribute is pretty low, as dexterity isn’t so much a requirement as the ability to pay attention and apply some good decision-making, making it an all-ages sort of affair that likely anyone with some patience could enjoy.