Butterline
A one thumb plane landing game where the wind is drawn on screen. Read it, flare, and grease it on.
Most landing games hide the weather and blame you for it. In Butterline the air is on screen. It is drawn as long streaks in stacked layers, and each layer shows its wind in knots at the right edge.
A gust stretches the streaks long and bright. Sinking air tints them cold and tilts them down. Near the ground they shorten, because the wind dies away over the runway. You see each of these a second or more before your aircraft flies into it.
Runs start on short final and last about twenty seconds. The goal is simple to say and hard to do: put the wheels down at under 60 feet per minute, close to the yellow aim mark, and stop before the end.
Butterline uses one input. On a phone you press anywhere on the screen; on a computer, Space or any mouse button does the same. Here is everything that one input does.
Holding raises the nose. The wing meets the air at a steeper angle, so you sink more slowly, but you also lose speed. Hold for too long and the speed runs out: the wing starts to shake, and a moment later it stalls.
Letting go lets the nose drop back. The aircraft picks up speed and comes down faster. The throttle looks after itself, following each aircraft's normal approach power and closing to idle near the ground, so holding and letting go is all the flying there is.
The dashed yellow line is the glide path down to the yellow aim mark on the runway. Two lights next to the aim mark, repeated at the top right of the screen, tell you where you are: two white lights mean you are high, two red lights mean you are low, and one of each means you are on the slope. The numbers at the top left are your sink in feet per minute, your speed in knots and your height in feet.
As the runway comes up, hold to raise the nose and slow the descent, then ease off so the aircraft settles instead of floating back up. The ground helps you here: within about one wingspan of the runway the wing makes extra lift, which is why aircraft seem to float over the last few feet. Use that float rather than fighting it.
Once the wheels are on, let go so the nose wheel comes down, then hold to brake. The brakes only work with the nose wheel on the ground. If you simply keep holding from the flare, the nose comes down by itself after about a second and then the brakes bite, so you still stop, just a little later. Rolling past the end of the runway fails the landing.
The landing the game is named after. A chime, a puff of tyre smoke and a short slow motion.
A good, safe landing. It counts as clean and keeps a Circuits run going.
Too much sink. Hard landings, bounces, stalls, landing short and overruns end a Circuits run.
Each landing also scores up to 100 points: up to 70 for a soft touchdown and up to 30 for touching down near the aim mark. The result card draws your flare as a line next to your own best flare in that aircraft, so you can see where you held too early or let go too soon.
The first approach starts by itself a few seconds after you open the game. When you reach flare height the game slows down and a thumb on the screen shows you when to press; holding brings the speed back to normal. After touchdown the thumb shows you to let go, then to press again for the brakes.
Until you have three clean landings, Circuits also gives you a little help: holding too long settles the aircraft onto the runway instead of stalling it, and one press of the brakes keeps braking until you stop. The touchdown is still graded on its real sink rate, and the Daily airport never helps, so it stays the same for everyone.
Pick an airport and an aircraft and land. The next approach starts at once with the wind one step worse: a stronger headwind, more shear near the ground, then gusts, sinking pockets and finally a tailwind up high. The first bad landing ends the run, and the run is scored on how many clean landings you strung together.
This is where you learn each aircraft, and where your logbook fills up.
Five approaches at one airport, in one aircraft and the same air for every player that day, on Android and on the web. A new Daily starts at your local midnight. There is no free retry, so every approach counts.
Finish it to keep your streak and share a card with your five stamps and total out of 500.
Everything is made up: generic aircraft types and invented airports. New ones unlock as your clean landings add up.
Streaks that tilt down are sinking air. Start holding a little before you fly into them, not when you feel the drop. Streaks that slant up are rising air: let go a little there or you will end up high.
Long, bright streaks are a gust. A stronger headwind lifts you for a moment, and when it fades you sink. Small, short presses ride a gust better than one long hold.
Each layer shows its wind in knots at the right edge. When the bottom number is much smaller than the top one, you will lose a lot of airspeed in the last few feet. Start the flare a little higher and be ready to hold a little longer.
Height is hard to judge from the side. The aircraft's shadow on the ground closes in as you descend, and when it meets the wheels you are about to touch. That is the moment to be holding gently, not starting to.
A shaking wing is the stall warning. Let go as soon as you see it: a firm landing is far better than a stall from ten feet. Holding until the shaking starts and then keeping on holding almost always ends hard.
The regional jet floats a long way in ground effect and raises its nose slowly. Begin the flare earlier than in the other aircraft and aim to touch at the yellow mark, not past it. Leave room to stop: the jet needs most of the runway.
At the mountain strip the runway rises toward you, so it arrives sooner than it looks. Flare a little earlier. Sink rate is measured against the sloping runway, so a landing that looks gentle can still grade firm.
The Daily has no free retry and adds up all five landings. A firm landing on the aim mark scores more than a float down the runway that ends in a bounce. Fly the first approach to learn the day's air, then go for butter.
Butterline is free on Google Play and shows ads. There are never ads during an approach. A full screen ad can appear only at a break, such as after a Circuits run or between Daily approaches, and at most once every few landings.
Rewarded ads are always your choice, for a bonus that is written on the button: fly a Daily approach again, keep a Circuits run going, or fly today's Daily in another aircraft. Remove ads is an optional one-time purchase through Google Play. It removes the ads between landings for good and gives those bonuses without an ad.
In your browser the game is the same, with an ad beside it on wide screens, and no purchases.
