Friday marked the first day of the new flying game Aera into the App Store.  We’ll have our full review soon, but so far the impressions have been very positive.  Here is a video and some info on the game:

About the game:

Aera is a casual flight simulator -- it is flying game for everyone.

The physics model, dynamics of the planes and controls are specially designed and tweaked to make it feel easy, fun but “real”; the gameplay mechanics and controls were build from ground up exclusively for iPhone/iPod.

The game has detailed 3D environments and aircrafts, 3D cinematic camera; but actual gameplay happens in 2D plane, as it would in side-scroller, but the dynamics of the planes is “real”. So, you get all the benefits of flight simulator, plus easy/natural controls and beautiful 3D graphics. The restriction of the gameplay to 2D plane allows us to do few magic tricks to make sure environment around you is always very detailed and nice looking, and there are no rendering artifacts like popping pieces of terrain, horizon clipping, etc; or just very simple artificially looking terrain -- all the things you see in pretty much every flight simulator. Aera looks better than any flight game on iPhone. Also, there is smart cinematic camera system in the game, to make sure you you feel the speed and the action.

Also, the game has very stylish design of menus and user interface, with beautifully hand-painted artwork.

Some key features of Aera:

* Unique mix of a side-scroller and a flight simulator

* Great step-by-step tutorial, will get you flying in no time!

* Different mission types (Aerobatic/Solo, Dog-Fight, Race) plus bonus -- Free Flight

* Advanced and carefully tuned physics simulation

* Controls specially designed for iPhone/iPod

* “TimeBack” feature -- rewinds time to quickly retry after crashing -- no need to start over again!

* Different Locations and Planes to fly

* All the environments are carefully modeled in 3D

* Advanced rendering techniques are used to produce very stylish visuals

* Video Replay -- watch the mission after you played it; change angles, pause, and more!

* Fast loading times

* Local WiFi MultiPlayer Game (Duel and Capture the Flag)

* The game was in full-time development for over 7 months!

Game has pretty much unlimited re-playability value -- even after you complete CAMPAIGN, you can replay missions with newly unlocked aircrafts, improve your records, develop new tactics, etc. The gameplay is open, so you can do it over and over again, and every time differently.