Sky Haven is an indie airport management simulator that’s been fully funded through Kickstarter. The game looks to be one of the most in-depth and realistic airport simulators I’ve ever seen, and it goes back 150 years in aviation to cover the first commercial flight. The game is pretty unique, has a wonderful art style, and it’s definitely releasing for PC. Some of the Kickstarter games we cover don’t see full funding, but this one is already over 100 percent at the time of writing, so you can rest easy and get excited for it knowing that there’s no disappointment around the corner.
150 Years of Aviation
Throughout the course of their playthrough in Sky Haven, players will build and develop an airport from a long stretch of track in a desert into a buzzing commercial airport. Along the way they’ll be upgrading buildings and systems as new innovations are made, scrapping older ones as they become irrelevant. This is totally different to other airport tycoons, which see players take control of an airport in the modern day, or just a very specific part of an airport, such as air traffic control.
The eras of aviation that players move through are as follows.
- The Beginning (from 1910): Airmail, air circuses, attempts of passenger flights
- Dawn of Airlines (from 1920): First regular flights and services
- Noontide of Propellers (from 1940): Multi-engine liners, more passengers and cargo
- Turbo Streams (from 1950): First turbojets, significantly increased traffic
- The Magnificence of the Sky (from 1970): New services for passengers, huge planes
- Fly Everybody (from 2000): Affordable prices, low-cost airlines, fast-paced operations
- Jet Shine (from 2020): Alluring future: mass supersonic, sub-orbital flights, electric vehicles.
The sandbox in which players build is fully customisable, and players have full control. If you want to set up a game where you start with all the cash in the world, or just enough to get your dirt track off the ground, then you can stipulate that before you begin. Everything, from the places people want to travel to, to the types of airline that will use your airport, can all be altered within the game’s settings. I’d love to see how a game pans out that is purely passenger flights, with no cargo getting off the ground whatsoever.
The Detail
I think the beauty of Sky Haven is the fact that it’s been build by aviation fans. The game has players setting everything up about an airport, not just the runways and buildings for the airport. Every vehicle that you’ve ever seen at an airport will play a part in Sky Haven, and it’s down to you to manage them. This management will creep into the way you design the runways and smaller roads, how you place buildings, and the exact schedule of every flight that comes in or goes out of the airport. Even though I’ve only seen screenshots of the spreadsheet that defines the timings for planes, that’s enough to make me have a mild panic attack already.
Since Sky Haven is already fully funded, you can simply keep an eye out for it when it launches for PC in early 2020. I can definitely see this being a sleeper hit for the year, and possibly one of the best tycoon games for 2020. It’ll probably get my Game of the Year vote for the management simulation category at least.