Skylines: Air Traffic Control

Skylines: Air Traffic Control is a 1 to 4/5 player cooperative puzzle board game. Players take on the role of different ATC stations (Approach/Departure, Delivery, Ground, and Tower) and must undertake a shift at versions of some of the world’s most iconic airports. Working together, players must deal with approaching and departing aircraft, represented by two individual decks of cards, and deliver varying flights to different locations both at and beyond the in-play airport, represented on the game board.

Players win the game if they can clear both the Approach and Departure decks without any safety hazards. At the basic level, hazards refer to safety protocols. If planes come into contact with one another, at any stage on the game board or on the approach/departure board, the game immediately comes to an end. In addition, players must deal with ‘Hazard Cards’, which emerge from both the Approach and Departure decks.

Skylines: Air Traffic Control is a 3D puzzle game. Players must exercise planning, communication, and cooperation to deal with the Approach and Departure decks and must show the ability to think several turns ahead of the current game turn to avoid catastrophic results that will bring the game to an end. The ‘gamification’ of this puzzle is achieved through action rationing.

Players will carry out their limited number of actions simultaneously during a game turn by applying tokens, representing radio instructions, to the planes currently under their jurisdiction. Once the game turn is over (i.e., when each player has issued their instructions), the planes then carry out these instructions on the game board and approach/departure boards, with the responsible players moving the pieces along allocated taxiing routes, approach/departure vectors, and runways. Once the planes are moved (represented by meeples/miniatures), the next game turn begins and players continue issuing instructions to their planes under their jurisdiction.

Skylines: Air Traffic Control can be played solo, with one player taking on all ATC station roles, though works best with the full complement of four players. An option for adding a fifth player to a game exists. This is achieved by splitting the Approach/Departure station into individual player roles. The game is also expandable, and can be played with multiple groups of players representing multiple airports, using multiple copies of the game. In this case, the role of player five in each group takes on the role of an Area Controller. The Area Controller is responsible for routing planes between the two airports.

—description from the publisher