Harbor Master for iPad Is Boatloads Of Fun [Review]

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If you’re a fan of Flight Control HD, you’ll love Harbor Master HD for the iPad from Imangi Studios. It shares the same principles as Flight Control, although instead of planes you’ve got boats, which you must guide to their corresponding colored docks by drawing their route with your finger, ensuring the boats do not make contact with each other along the way.

The way in which Harbour Master is different to Flight Control is that once you have guided a boat to its dock, you must wait for it to unload its cargo before you can guide it back off to sea. This adds just enough complexity and challenge to the game to prevent it being too simple and boring.

The game starts of pretty slow to get you in to the flow of things, but before you know it you’ll have boats sailing in from every direction and things get pretty intense. All in a good way I must add! If you’re good at multi-tasking, you’ll find it a breeze to guide your boats around the screen whilst keeping track of those unloading their cargo.

You may have already played Harbor Master on your iPhone/iPod Touch, and if you enjoyed that, you’re really in for a treat with the HD version. The larger display on the iPad allows for more boats and therefore more action and increased difficulty.

When you download the game, you’ll get the stunning Treasure Island map, which really looks fantastic on the iPad. You can also purchase the Pirate Passage map as an add-on, which will cost you $0.99 — less than the price of a coffee, this is well worth it in my opinion. The additional map adds to the excitement of the game by introducing pirate ships that you must shoot down before they sink your own boats.

Harbor Master offers some really great looking visuals, and it’s so addictive it will keep you entertained for hours. The multiplayer feature means a friend can help you manage your boats thanks to the multi-touch, and there are also online leader boards for competing worldwide. I suppose the best thing of all about Harbor Master has to be that it’s a free download on the App Store, so there’s no reason not to give this great game a try!

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