Touch Arcade

The idea behind the TouchArcade Game of the Week is that every Friday afternoon we post the one game that came out this week that we think is worth giving a special nod to. Now, before anyone goes over-thinking this, it doesn't necessarily mean our Game of the Week pick is the highest scoring game in a review, the game with the best graphics, or really any other quantifiable "best" thing. Instead, it's more just us picking out the single game out of the week's releases that we think is the most noteworthy, surprising, interesting, or really any other hard to describe quality that makes it worth having if you were just going to pick up one.

These picks might be controversial, and that's OK. If you disagree with what we've chosen, let's try to use the comments of these articles to have conversations about what game is your game of the week and why.

Without further ado…

Any Landing

Our Game of the Week this time around is Any Landing [Free] from developer Strange Flavour, and there are a couple of reasons it stood out to us. First off is that it's just a really fun game. Any Landing is a side-scrolling "endless crasher" which sees you piloting a jalopy of a plane from landing strip to landing strip, delivering passengers and cargo safely to keep your tiny startup airline afloat.

You'll simply tilt your device to ascend and descend, but careful use of fuel and braking is crucial as if you're to heavy-handed with either you'll find yourself stalling in mid-air or setting your poor engine on fire. Even if that does happen, you're particularly skilled in the art of crash landings, so there's always a chance you can glide your plane down someplace on the ground and still keep your rewards intact. Actually, one of the coolest things about Any Landing is that you aren't forced to make landings on landing strips alone, and besides the rough ground you can also make an emergency landing on a strip of highway or even on a moving train. It's pretty cool. There are also tons of upgrades and new planes to utilize, and you'll even get bonuses for crashing through buildings and trees.

So, Any Landing is a fun little game that feels great as a mobile title. However, the second thing that makes it stand out is Strange Flavour's stance on its free to play pay model. They're using what they dub their Play Nice system, which isn't too different from a typical free to play model except that they cap how much you're able to spend on any one game.

There are two options for buying the in-game Wing currency, one for 99¢ and one for $2.99. Or you can buy infinite wings for $9.99 and never have to worry about the in-game currency again. The really cool thing about this is that if you ever purchase the first two Wing packs, that amount is then applied to the $9.99 infinite option. So, say you buy two 99¢ packs, the infinite option would now be $7.99 taking into account the two dollars you've already spent. If you happen to reach that $9.99 threshold by buying the various Wing packs, you'll simply unlock the infinite option anyway. So the most you'll ever be able to spend on Any Landing is ten bucks.

It's an interesting twist on free to play, which is by design a pay model that's meant to keep a constant revenue stream going for as long as possible. People seem to hate games that appear to be never ending money pits, and those coin packs that go for fifty or a hundred bucks in some games just feel gross. Any Landing and the Play Nice system seems like a nice compromise, so it'll be interesting to see how the game fares in the wild world of the App Store. But, like I said, Any Landing is a damn fun game anyway, so seeing as it's free there's really no reason not to check it out or see what others are saying about it in our forums.