A surreal co-op game where you pilot the plane, serve bananas and try to land with as many passengers alive as possible.
Banana Airways is a chaotic airline game from Eggscape Entertainment, based in Buenos Aires. Its demo ranked among the top 20 on Steam Next Fest by concurrent players, out of more than 7,000 demos, according to the developer. The free demo is available on Steam for Windows and macOS. You can play solo or online with friends. Here is what I found in the demo.
Trailer courtesy of Eggscape Entertainment.
The Flight
You work on a flight as both pilot and cabin crew. You start by taking off, and once the plane is stable, the passengers start making demands, mostly for food and for care for the babies on board. Then everything goes wrong: severe turbulence, fires on the wings or inside the cabin, and damage to the fuselage. The goal is to take off, solve or at least soften every problem, keep the flight stable in the meantime and land with the maximum number of passengers alive.
The tools are simple. You serve bananas, soda cans and coffee. A hammer fixes the fuselage and extinguishers put out fires. You can even walk on the wing, through side doors or through holes in the fuselage. According to the developer, the passengers are mutant chickens that eat each other, so if you don’t feed them, things get ugly.
Did I mention the game is surreal? The demo includes the Radioactive Low Cost scenario, where both crew and passengers can get radioactive contamination. The cure is a syringe made from bananas. The developer also says that if you leave a baby alone, it might start flying.
Difficulty follows the class of the flight:
- Easy: Economy
- Medium: Business
- Hard: First class
The developer lists other scenarios that are not in the demo: War Fighter, Submarine, Celebrity Spa Ultra Luxe, War Rescue, Baby Delivery, Space Explorer and Bananoah’s Ark. The names already hint at the challenges.
Solo or Co-op
Everything can be done in single player, and you cover every role. In multiplayer it is easier to split tasks, but another obstacle appears: space can get tight. In both modes, chaos rules. At one moment you can have a storm, fires, holes in the fuselage, crying babies, hungry or thirsty passengers, and a plane to align and land.
According to the developer, online co-op supports up to six players. You can invite friends directly, or create a match and share the room code. Microphone is supported.
🎧 Calling out “fire on the left wing” is better with a good mic. Since the game supports voice chat, a comfortable headset with microphone makes the co-op chaos easier to coordinate.
Options, Music and Requirements
The menu has few options. For video, you only choose fullscreen or not, plus performance from Very Low to Ultra. I missed screen resolution options. On the plus side, the game supports more than 30 languages.
The music is soft and very calm, a big contrast with the madness on screen while everything happens at once.
According to the Steam page, the demo requirements for Windows are:
- Minimum: Windows 10 64-bit, Intel Core i5 at 2.5 GHz or equivalent, 8 GB of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT, DirectX 12, broadband internet, 4 GB of storage.
- Recommended: Windows 11 64-bit, Intel Core i5 at 3.0 GHz or AMD Ryzen 5 or equivalent, 16 GB of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 or AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT, DirectX 12, broadband internet, 6 GB of storage.
The Steam page also lists a macOS build, with macOS 12 Monterey and an Apple M1 as the minimum.
Final Thoughts
Banana Airways is loud, absurd chaos, and somehow, the calm soundtrack makes it even funnier. I would have liked to see resolution options, and the cramped space can get in the way when playing with friends. Still, if you enjoy co-op games where everything goes wrong at once, the free demo is well worth trying with a friend. Just hope the developers didn’t take inspiration from a real airline’s safety record. Flying is supposed to be a safe way to travel, after all.✈️🍌
Demo on Steam: Banana Airways Demo | Full game on Steam: Banana Airways
Images courtesy of the developer.
Disclosure: the developer contacted QG Reloaded and provided press material. I played the free demo only, without a press key, and this post was not paid for.
As an Amazon Associate, QG Reloaded earns from qualifying purchases.
