I am an real life ATC so I might be a bit biased. I give this game a positive score although in my opinion it's really overpriced for the content it offers. I would recommend it without doubt if it cost like 15$.

This game can offer quite reallistic feel although of course it is limited. There are no vehicles, flight strips are less than basic, there is no coordination and we have to pay extra to get real airlines and schedules. It could use real weather too... Still it is fun balancing between realism and playability. Voice regognition works quite well and it's fun to give clearances by voice. Basic ATC techniques work as intended. Airports are nice and look realistic, also airplanes behave as they should (except push-back which lasts too short).

I would really like this game to have more smaller airports because they give the most realistic experience. On TIST I can turn off ground radar and work visually just like in reality. All other airport are much larger and we have to rely on our ground movement view (which shows callsigns and cleared routes for every airplane) which looks a bit like a cheat. Not to mention that one controller would not be able to handle whole traffc of LAX or JFK alone especially relying only on his visual judgement. Therefore on big airports the game looks more like a action game (we can learn to talk very fast too) than real simulation. Even though it is still fun. Not to mention that we can play in multiplayer dividing the roles with our friend.

To quickly summarise. I think this game can give a real feeling of how it is to be a tower ATC. If you are interested in this kind of stuff you will definitely find it fun. If you are not into ATC or aviation, don't even bother.

I love this game, personally. It has a high learning curve, but you'll pick it up quickly if your passion for aviation or ATC (Air Traffic Controlling) is strong enough.

I'm neither a pilot or real ATC, just an enthusiast who spends hours watching aviation channels, and gaming channels that focused on this game. I truly wanted it, If you've watched videos on this topic, if you watch people play 30 minutes or an hour at a certain airport on youtube and wanted more? This game may be for you.

I say may because there are too many issues with game itself. EVEN IF you hit all the benchmarks above I still want you to be weary of this purchase.

There are only 3 airports included in the default game. PHL (Philadelphia), LAX (Los Angeles), and the 3rd, I don't remember, but it's just 1 runway and very small. Great for an introduction but once you get the basics down and move on, you're really only left with 2 airports that can really give you a challenge. For example, multiple runways, taxiways, and aprons/terminals.

There are over 25 individual airports that you need to purchase individually. And right now with the Summer Steam Sale going on it adds up to ~$360.

But wait, there's more. You also need to go on their actual website, to buy EVEN MORE DLC. DLC that you cannot buy here on steam.

If you want to use real callsigns like Delta 504, Quantas 7, Japan Air 306? You need to buy that for about $7-$10. The base game replaces the callsigns with fictitious ones. So to really enjoy the immersion of being an ATC, it's a must buy. (Should be included in the game by default, but moving on...)

So, you bought the game, you bought the callsign DLC off the website. You decide to load up Philadelphia. All the planes are white. Yep. There's a DLC for that. So you want to see the cool liveries on the planes? You need to buy that.

And that's not a one time buy, like the callsigns. Thankfully you buy the real airline names, and it applies to all maps.

If you buy the liveries for the planes in Philadelphia? They stay in Philadelphia. So not only do you need to buy each map individually, you need to purchase the liveries for the planes, for each airport. At that rate just bundle the map and liveries together and just raise the price, at least you could psychologically trick us into buying it, rather than being so blatantly obvious about it.

Ultimately, if you're still sold on hearing all the facts about this game. These are fact, this is not my opinion this is all real, and what you'll have to do and go through if you want the immersion in this game.

Is it a good game? Yes, absolutely in my opinion I love it and always finding myself coming back to do an hour session here and there. It's addicting.

Can I recommend it? No, I honestly can't. Especially if you're just a casual personal passing by thinking this looks cool? First time seeing this game or this page? Absolutely not.

If you've seen game play of this, thoroughly enjoy aviation, especially the ATC side of things, and were already aware of this game prior to coming to this page?

Honestly it's up to you at that point. If you can set aside everything I said, and still don't mind giving these developers money only further incentivizing their practices?

Then go for it.

In conclusion would I recommend this game? No. Not for a casual player and not even for an enthusiast because there is so much other stuff wrapped up in it, you feel like you're only buying half a game

I can't recommend this game even on sale because I've bought more fully fleshed out games at $30 (The current Summer Steam Sale price) Let alone $50.

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REVISIONS

September 9, 2021: If you decide to do a clean wipe and install of your OS, you lose your Real Traffic you downloaded off the website.

April 4th 2022: I was able to contact the Developers through Facebook and they were able to restore my DLC I purchased off the website.

August 8th, 2022: Cleaned up a few things about my review. Website is no longer sketchy and looks like a normal website now. Separate DLC purchased off the website now installs via .exe installer, as opposed to my original review where I said the files needed to be placed in a directory manually. Windows didn't flag the .exe installer, but it also wasn't 100% safe about it either. Take that as you will.

I can't recommend this game. I had fun playing at first but the game is practically unplayable without the DLC and given the price point you're out $80 before you can even start playing. Then comes the bugs and issues. The game studio is more focused on churning out semi working DLC (new airports) rather than fixing any small bugs or issues with the base game that the community is begging for. Just read the rest of the comments. I would play this game a lot more and probably buy more DLC if some underlying issues were resolved. It sounds like they're working on another game rather than fixing these issues so wait for that or only buy this if you get it at or under $20 with DLC because its honestly not worth much more than that.

It's a really good game but i have to agree with some of the other reviewers, the DLC is way too expensive when all you're getting for your money is the same game with a different layout. The three airports that come with the base game soon become a bit boring but you want another couple of airports and you have to pay for the game again basically. If they were £5 instead of £15 I would buy the lot and i'm sure the developers would get more sales and more money if they lowered the price a bit.

Game is fun if, and only if, you are interested in ATC and proper terminology. The voice recognition commands is the only thing that makes this game a worthy buy.

HOWEVER, there are a lot of issues with this game:

* A lot of commonly used phrases are not usable in this game. For example, "Give way to x" and "Follow x" does not work.
* In the biggest airports, the workload can quickly become unmanagable. This game combines both Tower, Ground AND RAMP control. In bigger airports (KLAX/KJFK for example), you are responsible for the ground control of all aircrafts, and all 4 runways. When it gets busy, it gets VERY busy.
* Very limited amount of airports. Right now, you only have the bigger airports from US in the game plus Munich.
* Cost. In order get other airports, you need to visit their website to get it. This means that your CC is stored elsewhere and it isn't processed by Steam. Then, you need to pay $9.99 for Real Traffic, which is critical for immersion in an ATC game. Each Airport costs $18.99, which you'll need for KSAN (Most busy single runway airport in US) or KJFK (It's KJFK!) and others (KATL/KPHL)

But! There are no colours for buildings OR the planes. To get that, you need to top up ANOTHER $6.99 PER AIRPORT.

So that's $50 for the game + $10 for real traffic + $25 PER AIRPORT, you are paying over $100 easily for a game that doesn't have a lot of content, and whose only strong point is the voice recognition technology.

* And finally, NOT ALL DLCS ARE ON STEAM. Why, just why? Airports are a DLC on Steam, but Real Traffic and Real Colours are not?

Conclusion: Get it if you like listening to liveatc.net. Otherwise, this is just too expensive.

Please read the reviews: It is a
- overpriced
- simulator-not-a-game with
- mediocre-at-best graphics (look at the screenshots and believe them. They're actually quite bad) and
- made up airlines only (the airports are real though)

Once you are clear what you are getting, and get it when it's on sale, though:
+ The commands work great, I have very little trouble. There are a lot of them
- but not quite all. You can not have them give way, or cross a runway when they get there. This causes some micromanagement and some planes that you have to delete in order to fix a traffic jam.
+ It's great fun once you get used to it, and immersive enough to have you lose track of time.

I wish they made a newer version with
- better graphics (especially the render distance. I can only see planes when they are literally at the end of the runway already),
- more commands like cancelling clearances to line up and wait, better routing by "giving way to COMPANY or N PLANES from LEFT/RIGHT" etc (There are like 10 flavours of takeoff clearance with wind and headings and altitudes and what not: That level of depth across the board please),
- and pilots calling you back, e.g. for clearance to cross a runway or if you forget them for a while. Don't just sit there.

Until then: Thumbs up if, but only if you really like ATC.

This is a nice and realistic ATC game, however, I would not recommend purchasing this game at full price. Unfortunately it is very bland. You work with fake airlines that do not have paint schemes. Yes, that is correct, the developers are having you pay $49.99 for a game that has less graphics than their mobile phone competitor "Unmatched Air Traffic Control". This being said, there are third party developers capitalizing on this flaw within the game by offering maps and color packs for an additional charge. So essentially, if you buy this game for $50, you will need to spend an additional $15 to make the game look the way it should. Is this game worth $65, not hardly.

We have established that the devs skipped out on the graphics, how are they doing on the gameplay? Terrible. There's no tutorial whatsoever, so the first couple hours of gameplay is all spent relying on Google to answer you questions about how to properly depart aircrafts, assign specific taxi-routes and change landing runways. There is a HUGE learning curve.

You would imagine that for $50 you would get the ability to change airport viewing angles or maybe even watch the planes land and take off up close. You're wrong. You do not have any additional cameras and the zoom from the tower is horrible at best.

Looking at the steam add-ons, you can probably guess that these devs are relying on you to buy, buy, buy. For $50, you get 3 airports, but anything past that and you gotta fork up some serious cash. Overall, big waste of time and money. If i could get a refund for this game, i would. But considering all of the money i sank into this game to get it to appear like the $50 product that I assumed i was purchasing, a refund would still put me upside down on the game considering $35 of my purchase went to a third party dev to dress up the game.

I would not recommend this game until the devs put some serious effort into it. Very dissatisfied.

I refunded this sim. Don't get me wrong, it looks absolutely gorgeous. In terms of quality, The only thing I can compare it to is ATC 4, which is a Japanese ATC sim that can be a bit tricky to acquire, but is far superior to this and has a ton of features not found here. The other ATC Madness series is cartoonish compared to these two sims I've mentioned. I still have this on my wishlist and hope the bugs get squished.

The first reason I refunded this is because there is a well-known adverstising banner bug that prevents you from starting the sim. It advertises DLC for this sim. I reinstalled and did an integrity check of the game files and this fixed that problem initially, but it appeared again the next day.

The second reason I refunded this sim is because I could not pan view around and this was after getting a response from the developer about this problem. I tried the suggestion and it did not work.

The third reason I refunded this sim is because of a well-known ground traffic bug. Some planes that are being pushed back into position so they can begin taxiing to a specific runway simply get stuck. The pushback trolley would just sit there and spin in circles. There is an option to delete airplanes, for whatever reason, but this is laughable. Instead of fixing this problem, it looks as though a quick fix was implemented by allowing a delete feature in game.

That was strike three for me, you're out!

The developer was fast, kind and, more importantly, actually present for customers complaints/questions. Thats a rarity nowadays IMO. I told the developer nevermind and that I was requesting a refund. For $49.99, it just felt like this needed more fine-tuning and these bugs were something I'd expect from an EA title and not a full release.

If you're into ATC or want to learn a bit about this professions experience on a basic level, I'd absolutely keep your eye on this one. I feel bad about the refund and eagerly await patch news. I was really enjoying it and would be more than happy to purchase again after some fixes have been implemented.

Great game but they should add some emergency scenarios to mix it up a bit, not only adding more airports

The main reason I can't recommend this game is due to the outrageous DLC pricing model. The base game only includes three airports with fake airlines. Oh, you want real airlines? That's another $10. Oh, and, you want the aircraft models to have the real airline liveries? That's another $7. Per airport.