Touch Arcade Review: Casual Aerial Action Game 'Aera' is Great Fun

Touch Arcade:

iChromo's 2.5D flight action title Aera was one of the many new games to recently arrive in the App Store. Aera is a sort-of casual flight simulator / side scroller at heart. At least, that's how iChromo describes it - but it's a little more side scroller than flight simulator. Granted, that description might be a little hard to picture. Think Pandemonium! - or closer still, NiGHTS Into Dreams - but in an airplane.

Aera puts you in tilt control of a variety of aircraft across a range of different play challenges. There's Aerobatic / Solo, which is a run through the hoops and between the floating mines to collect a set number of balls within a time limit, Dog-Fight, which is, well, an aerial dog fight, and Race, which is a pylon to pylon (and back) run against the clock while dodging those pesky mines. The various challenges can be played in a Campaign mode which features two tutorial levels and 10 missions (three Solo, three Race, 4 Dog-Fights) or a Quick Game mode that varies the challenges based on the difficulty level selected. There's a no-pressure Free Flight mode, as well. There are two unlockable locations and 3 unlockable planes.