We’ll always love SailX for doing an engrossing job providing digital sail racing while teaching real race fundamentals to sailors for more than a decade now, but it’s far too geeky to ever get Angry Birds levels of interest. It’s a shame that there’s never really been a good mobile sailing game that can keep the average kid’s attention, but that could all change with TouchArcade’s launch of Silly Sailing for the iPhone.
We tried it for a bit more than an hour and shared it with several under-10s, and at least for that amount of time, it was an enjoyable, fun romp. Controls are limited to steering and mainsheet for a variety of silly-ass boats, and the courses around islands and through tons of obstacles are aesthetically great and provide an engaging escape from the daily grind. Sheet in when upwind and tack when necessary, sheet out when downwind and work your angles, and you may be surprised how nicely it works to approximate real sailing. For added fun, win some races and unlock the catamaran made of bananas or the monohull made of a shoe…
The app needs some fine tuning, but this one could make it big. If it doesn’t, your Opti kids will still enjoy the hell out of it. Here’s a review at TouchArcade and here’s some gameplay.
And if you’re old enough to get the title reference, make sure your kids see the movie that redefined nuclear war for a generation.
