Avia Corporation Review

Game: Avia Corporation
Genre: Simulation, Strategy, Arcade
System: Nintendo Switch (also available on Steam (Windows), iOS & Android)
Developers | Publishers: Elusor Games
Age Rating: US E | EU 3+
Price: US $16.00 | UK £13.29 | EU € 16,99
Release Date: June 9th, 2023

Review code used, with many thanks to Elusor Games.

Avia Corporation is an economy strategy game focusing on creating a profitable airline company and managing airline routes.

Living close to an airport, I watch the planes fly overhead daily. It’s also turned me into a plane enthusiast, so I wanted to try this game. But how did it go, did the planes land and take off successfully or did my business crash and burn? Let’s find out.

Build a Thriving Business

When the Avia Corporation starts, you are shown what to do via a few text info boxes randomly appearing on the screen. It’s what I call a minimalistic tutorial, it gives you enough information to get you started, but it also leaves out a lot of important info that should be replayed to the player to help them enjoy the experience.

While Avia Corporation is not a challenging game per se, the tutorial info boxes leave much to be desired. For instance, the world map shows all the icons for the airports. The icons come in different shapes, from triangles to circles, but the game doesn’t mention anywhere why the icons are of different shapes.

Eventually, it clicked that the icons in different shapes corresponded to the level of each airport. Furthermore, when you first start out and buy or rent your first planes and go to make a route to fly to different airports, you can only fly to low-level airports until your business has increased its level and become more profitable.

Rent or Buy Aircraft

You can rent or buy a new or used aircraft with your starting budget. You can choose from small planes like the Pessno or large planes like the Voing (a Boeing with a name change). The safest bet is to buy a small plane and work your way up the levels to increase your profits and move up from level zero to level 4.

After you have purchased a plane, it’s time to set up a route from one airport to another. Once you find a suitable airport, it’s pretty easy to set up a route by drawing a line from one airport to another. By the way, the game can also be controlled by the touch screen on the Nintendo Switch; you can run your finger across the screen to set up a route.

There are over one hundred and forty dots on the map representing cities around the world. Of course, you won’t be able to fly to all the cities until the level of your business increases.

You can control the passenger flow and change the price of the passenger tickets. In addition, you can monitor the passenger flow to the cities, taking into account the population and popularity of the city to the passengers.

Furthermore, to have your company’s rating increase, you have to consider the passengers waiting time at the terminal, ticket price, and the age of the plane you are using.

Planes Fly from One Airport to Another

I didn’t find the game overly challenging; once my business was up and running and I made a profit, there wasn’t much to do. You watch the icons of the planes fly from one airport to another and monitor your budget. There is a lot of clicking on the menus, So much clicking that it turns into a click fest rather than actual gameplay.

I don’t mind all the clicking on the menus, it’s part of the game. But I object to the continuous clicking sound you hear when you click on the menu, and you can’t turn the annoying sound off in the settings. Honestly, it would drive you mad; in the end, I turned the sound off entirely; otherwise, my Switch was in danger of being turfed out the window.

Visuals and Controls

Visually Avia Corporation gets the job done. But it certainly won’t blow your socks off as it’s rather plain in looks. A game does not have to have beautiful graphics if it is backed up with an engrossing and stimulating gameplay loop.

Unfortunately, Avia Corporation doesn’t have that going for it, either. As I’ve mentioned, the game can be controlled via the touchscreen or use the joy-cons. The controls work as they should.

Conclusion

Avia Corporation is a minimalistic strategy game in more than one sense of the word. It’s minimalistic, from the graphics right down to the tutorial.

Having played many similar games in the economic strategy genre, I wanted to like Avia Corporation. Unfortunately, that was hindered by a poor tutorial that doesn’t explain the game properly and a gameplay loop that feels uninteresting and dull.

Final Verdict: I don’t Like it