Quirky App Of The Day: Direct Traffic In The Skies Of Echelon

Skies Of Echelon, The ($0.99) by SIMON JEFFERIES lets you bring order to the chaos around you. With blimps and planes ready to dock in order drop off their cargo, it’s up to you to make sure that no one collides. As easy as that might sound, the game becomes harder as more aircraft crowd the skies.

You are in charge of a docking station. Blimps and airplanes will come to you to drop off their cargo. The more cargo an aircraft is carrying, the longer it will take to finish docking. I wish that after docking the aircraft would go merrily on its way without any guidance from you. Alas, this is not the case. These aircraft are like small children and have to be told what to do.

You have to guide them to the dock by dragging your finger from the aircraft to the station to create a path. When your aircraft has finished unloading its cargo, you have to draw a line from the docking station to the edge of the screen.

Getting the aircraft to dock and leave the station are the easy tasks that you must perform. The true difficulty comes in keeping everything around you organized. While you are docking ships, more aircraft will come onto the screen. Your job is to not only dock and release these ships, but to make sure that they don’t collide with each other. You can do this by dragging your finger to draw different paths for them to take.

Your score is measured in bronze, silver, or gold stars. Each star requires a specific amount of cargo to be unloaded. For example, in the first level, you have to unload 25 cargo bundles to achieve a gold star. The higher levels have larger cargo requirements.

The game begins pretty peacefully with only a few ships on the screen at a time. It gets hectic really fast as more ships flood the screen. It can become quite a challenge to keep them from running into each other as some ships leave and others join the masses.

The Skies Of Echelon is an iPhone app, and it’s available in the App Store for $0.99.