astragon Entertainment swoop in to give us the info on Take Off - The Flight Simulator

This month (9th June), German publishers astragon Entertainment released addictive title Take Off – The Flight Simulator, which allows aviation fans to take to the skies from their handheld devices. Exploring a number of popular international airports and destinations, the game provides a much-needed escape from the mundane.

We spoke to developers Jujubee to get the lowdown on the release.

What do you think your game offers that you can’t get from any other title on the App Store?

Take Off - The Flight Simulator is worlds apart from games of this genre. Our goal was to transfer the feeling of being a pilot onto the screen of your mobile device. We wanted to focus on things that really matter and that offer you a great experience. Despite having full control of your aircraft and even being able to program your autopilot, the game is very accessible to players who had never the chance to play simulation games.

There are two more elements that you don’t find every day in similar titles, which give you a much more interesting and rewarding experience. Firstly, there are the missions. The game contains dozens of them and you unlock them by acquiring pilot licenses and getting new planes. Rescue missions, sightseeing flights, emergency landings - you name it. Second, in Take Off – The Flight Simulator you will be able to explore the Hawaiian Islands in a free flight mode. In most other flight simulators you just fly from destination A to B. But we wanted to give players much more than this.

And if missions are not enough for you, you can run and manage your own airline, have a fleet consisting of dozens of planes that you can send to popular worldwide destinations, including New York, Frankfurt, Tokyo or Beijing. You can even perform take offs and landings from these airports on your own. Moreover, you can enhance the performance of your planes and even choose skins to personalize your airline’s fleet.

In summary, Take Off - The Flight Simulator is simply a huge, but very accessible game that offers you ton of variety and will keep you hooked for hours!

What challenges did you face during development, and how did you overcome them?

Flight simulators are quite challenging because such games require a lot of balancing and optimisation on many levels. You want to have great-looking aircrafts with animated cockpits, but at the same time you need to generate very large and seamless terrains with buildings, weather effects, etc. This can even be a challenge for computer-based titles, so we had to find a solution that allowed us to get a similar level of detail on a mobile device. The proper balance was also important as well as precise controls and realistic physics. We have spent a lot of time on tweaking these aspects of the game, so you get a great sense of flight.

Which part of the game are you personally the most proud of and why?

The whole game makes us proud and we have put a lot of effort into making a title that would be fun to play not only for hardcore simulation fans, but also for casual gamers. Nevertheless, we are extremely happy that we were able to make a game with such an amount of exciting content. Take Off - The Flight Simulator is fun to play, because the game is full of goals and challenges for the player and with dozens of missions and an airline manager you will never get bored.

Do you have anything planned in terms of future updates for the game and, if so, can you give us any details of what these might include?

We will keep working on several updates to both improve and extend the game experience, of course.

Have you any plans to bring the game to any other mobile platforms, such as Windows Phone, or Steam?

The game was released for iPhone®, iPad® and Android™ devices on June 9, 2016. There are no plans to release it on other platforms at this point.

App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/app/take-off-the-flight-simulator/id982235342

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.astragon.takeoff