Harbor Master for iPhone – An Excellent Flight Control Alternative
Often, imitation is a form of flattery, which is seen here, in the application Harbor Master for iPhone. It replicates the basic concept shown in Firemint’s hit game, Flight Control, and adds it own touch to it.
The main concept of Flight Control is chaos management, which is exactly what Imangi Studios brings us, except in a different form. Instead of directing a plethora of airplanes into their corresponding airports, you control an extremely busy port buzzing with a lot of boats. What can they do? Of course, they dock at the ports, and unload their cargo.
Lets delve deeper into the gameplay of Harbor Master, assuming that you have not played Flight Control before. You control many boats, and are expected to redirect each and every one into its corresponding dock. The controls of the game are extremely simple – just tap and drag to create a path for the boats to go. How do you determine where each boat goes? It’s by color; ships with purple cargo on them need to be sent to the purple docks. Ships with orange cargo on them need to be directed to the orange docks. The game ends when two of your boats collide into each other.
This is where Imangi has managed to switch it up a bit; they’ve added some more spice to the game. In Flight Control, once you the airplanes landed in their appropriate airstrip, that was it. End of story. You could then go and provide attention to the remaining incoming airplanes. This is not the case in Harbor Master. Once the ship has unloaded all its cargo, you’re required to redirect them out of the screen, it can be anywhere, as long as the ship goes off the screen.
This brings us to the sizes of some of the ships and how they relate to the game. First of all, if you’re moving a large ship with four cargo slots, you need to consider the fact that it is going to move much slower than the boats with only one cargo slot. The larger ships are much more beneficial than the small ones; they provide more points. If you successfully unload a ship with four cargo slots, you get four points. If you unload a boat with only one cargo slot, you will only receive one point.
To spice up the game even more, Imangi has provided a variety of maps that you can play at. They didn’t have all these in their first version of the game, but as time went along, they pushed out new updates which contained more and more maps, competing with Firemint (who was also pushing out more and more maps).
Another great thing about Harbor Master is multiplayer mode. When I say multiplayer, I don’t mean that you play on an online server, I mean that you can play with a friend (as long as he owns an iPhone 3G/3GS or iPod Touch 2G/3G). The reason you are restricted to those specific devices if because the iPod Touch 1G does not have bluetooth capabilities. Still, I’m not going to complain, especially since the application is only 99 cents.
Along with the rest of the game, the replay value is excellent. You’re definitely going to keep coming back for more challenges and the desire to unlock new maps.
In a nutshell, Harbor Master is an enjoyable game for the average person looking to kill some time, and at 99 cents, you can’t get a deal better than this! There are absolutely no faults (in my opinion). It even has a system for global high scores, which is something a couple of other applications were lacking, granting them a lower overall rating. If you’re afraid of wasting your 99 cents, you can always try out the lite version of their application to get a feel for the game.
Our Rating: 5/5
Developer Link: Imangi Studios
