Airport Frenzy: Plane Jam 3D

The board is the frenzy. You are the one who stays calm.

Every stand is taken, the gate lounge is filling up, and the apron is nose-to-tail with aircraft that cannot move. Tap a plane with a clear lane, watch it taxi to a stand, and start boarding. There is no clock. There never is.

★ READ THE PLANE, READ THE LINE

Most sorting puzzles ask you to match one color. Not this one. Every aircraft carries cabins, each cabin a color and a count of seats left, and the front passenger boards any plane with a seat in their color. Families need two seats together. Later, some planes board by group, one cabin at a time. The plane that solves your problem this second can be useless three passengers later.

★ THE JAM IS THE PUZZLE

Aircraft park nose to tail. A plane behind another cannot leave until the one in front has gone, so clearing the lane for the plane you need can cost a gate. You are reading a line and a parking lot at once.

★ A WRONG TAP IS NEVER THE END

Rewind is free, as many moves back as you like. Lose the board and the game offers to take you back to the move where it went wrong.

★ NO TIMER, EVER

Take a minute on a level or take twenty. Nothing counts down and no level is lost because you stopped to think. The pressure is on the board, not on you.

★ AN AIRPLANE GAME FOR PUZZLE PEOPLE

If you like traffic jam puzzles, parking games and color sort puzzles, the rules will feel familiar for about ten levels and then stop. If you like airplanes, this is an airport game about the one part of the airport that really is a puzzle: the apron, the gates and the line at the door. It plays offline, so it works in the air, on the train and anywhere without wifi. Nothing runs against the clock, so it is a relaxing brain game rather than a reflex test, and every level is a logic puzzle with a proven solution.

★ PLAYABLE IN GRAYSCALE

Every boarding zone carries a glyph as well as a color, so the board reads without relying on color vision. Roughly one man in twelve has some red-green color deficiency, and most puzzles in this genre lock them out. This one does not.

★ WHAT IS IN IT

• 300 hand-verified levels across nine chapters, each one proven solvable
• Six boosters — Control Tower, Tug, Rewind, Open a Gate, Final Call and VIP Sweep
• 30 achievements, from your first departure to a perfect week
• A seven-day calendar that pays out when you come back
• Aircraft that push back, turn onto the runway and take off
• Plays offline, so it works at 35,000 feet

Free to play, with optional purchases for coins and boosters.