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Only one of the eighteen games on this page carries a Mixed verdict on Steam, and it is also the most expensive of them: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, 59% positive across 21,000+ reviews. The two best rated are a small 2025 indie about bolting a biplane together and a helicopter game released last November, both sitting at 96%. Price and reception point in opposite directions here more than almost anywhere else in the catalogue.
"Flight" on Steam is a tag, not a genre. The same word is stamped on a six-hour transatlantic leg flown from a study-grade cockpit, on a twenty-minute dogfight over the sea, and on games where you never leave the control tower. Ranking those against each other says nothing useful, so below they are split by what you actually spend the session doing, with the Steam verdict and a live price next to each one.
Do you need a joystick?
For the three cockpit sims, in practice yes: they can be flown with a mouse, and nobody does it twice. Ace Combat 7 and everything in the combat section is built around a gamepad and plays perfectly on one. The two drone games assume you have either a pad or your own FPV radio. The rest of the page — everything you build, and everything you run from the ground — is mouse and keyboard. Worth settling before you spend, because a stick costs more than most of the games below.
The full list, before the detail
What you do in each one, how Steam has judged it, and a price that moves whenever the shops do.
| Game | What you do in it | Steam rating | Price on PC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 | Fly anywhere on a streamed Earth | Mixed · 21,000+ reviews | € (with coupon Gocdkeys) |
| Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition | Learn instrument flying, cheaply | Very Positive · 23,000+ reviews | € (with coupon GCDKGamivo) |
| X-Plane 11 | Feel the aerodynamics, not a table | Very Positive · 19,000+ reviews | € (with coupon GCDKGamivo) |
| Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown | Missiles, clouds and radio chatter | Very Positive · 46,000+ reviews | € (with coupon GCDKGamivo) |
| IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad | Fly the Eastern Front, 1942 | Mostly Positive · 8,700+ reviews | € (with coupon GCKG2AK5N2G) |
| Bomber Crew | Run a Lancaster's seven crew | Very Positive · 10,000+ reviews | € (with coupon GCDKGamivo) |
| Heliborne | Cold War helicopters, versus people | Mostly Positive · 3,200+ reviews | € (with coupon AUGGOC10) |
| Cleared Hot | Gunship runs that last minutes | Overwhelmingly Positive · 3,800+ reviews | € |
| Tiny Combat Arena | Eighties jets in a low-poly sandbox | Very Positive · 1,500+ reviews | € |
| Trailmakers | Bolt a plane together, then land it | Very Positive · 33,000+ reviews | € (with coupon GCDK14DEAL) |
| SimplePlanes | Draw a fuselage and see if it flies | Very Positive · 9,700+ reviews | € (with coupon GOCDKEYS10) |
| Aviassembly | Assemble aircraft in a hangar | Overwhelmingly Positive · 9,100+ reviews | € (with coupon GCKG2AK5N2G) |
| Flyout | Shape the airframe, build the engine | Very Positive · 2,100+ reviews | € (with coupon GCDK14DEAL) |
| Airport CEO | Lay out a terminal that does not jam | Very Positive · 7,700+ reviews | € (with coupon GOCDKEYS10) |
| Fly Corp | Draw airline routes on a world map | Very Positive · 3,000+ reviews | € (with coupon Gocdkeys) |
| Mini Airways | Be the tower, and clear the runways | Very Positive · 1,300+ reviews | € (with coupon GCDKGamivo) |
| Liftoff: FPV Drone Racing | Practise FPV without crashing money | Overwhelmingly Positive · 13,000+ reviews | € (with coupon AUGGOC10) |
| The Drone Racing League Simulator | Race the actual DRL circuit | Very Positive · 4,000+ reviews | € |
Airliners, and the sims that treat flying as a subject
Three of them, and they barely compete: one is a decade old and costs less than a coffee, one has the highest critical score on this page, and one is the newest and the only Mixed verdict here.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 — the most expensive game here, and the only Mixed one
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, by Asobo Studio. Mixed · 21,000+ reviews — 59% positive, the lowest share on this page by a wide margin. It streams almost the entire planet from Microsoft's servers rather than from your disk, which is both why it looks the way it does and why a poor connection ruins it. Read the recent reviews rather than the overall score before you buy this one.
Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition — the cheapest way into a full civil sim
Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition, by Microsoft Game Studios. Very Positive · 23,000+ reviews and a 76 on Metacritic. It arrived on Steam in 2014 and the original is from 2006, so it shows its age the moment you look outside; inside the cockpit the systems are complete enough that people still learn instrument flying on it. Nothing else on this page opens that door for so little.
X-Plane 11 — the best-reviewed game here by critics
X-Plane 11, by Laminar Research. Very Positive · 19,000+ reviews and an 88 on Metacritic, the highest critical score on this page. The selling point is the flight model: it works out the forces acting on each part of the aircraft instead of looking the behaviour up in a table, which is why unusual aircraft and awkward situations feel right in it. Worth knowing that X-Plane 12 exists — 11 is the one that is cheap.
Air combat, from arcade to 1942
Six games, and the spread inside this group is the widest on the page: one sold in the millions, one is written by a single person, and one is nine months old.
Ace Combat 7 — the most reviewed game on this page
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, by Bandai Namco. Very Positive · 46,000+ reviews and a 78 on Metacritic. No fuel planning and no checklists: missiles, cloud banks and a story told over the radio. It also draws the most sellers here — 75 live offers from 20 shops as this page was written — which is exactly why the price swings so far from one shop to the next.
IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad — the one that will spin you into the ground
IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad. Mostly Positive · 8,700+ reviews and a 74 on Metacritic. Eastern Front, 1942, and a flight model that punishes pulling too hard. The reservations in the reviews are mostly about the storefront rather than the flying: the series is sold as a stack of separate campaigns and aircraft packs, so check what a given key actually contains before you buy.
Bomber Crew — you are not the pilot
Bomber Crew, by Runner Duck. Very Positive · 10,000+ reviews and a 75 on Metacritic. One Lancaster, seven crew with names, and your job is moving them between stations while the aircraft comes apart around them. Losing a gunner is permanent, and that single rule is what makes it work.
Heliborne — helicopters, and only helicopters
Heliborne. Mostly Positive · 3,200+ reviews and a 71 on Metacritic — 76% positive, the second-lowest share here. Cold War rotary aircraft fighting over objectives in team matches, much closer to a battlefield game than to a simulator. It is also the only game on this page that needs other people online to be at its best.
Cleared Hot — one of the two best-rated games on this page
Cleared Hot, out in November 2025. Overwhelmingly Positive · 3,800+ reviews, at 96% positive; only Aviassembly matches that here. A top-down gunship game far closer to an arcade cabinet than to Heliborne: you fly, you shoot, a run lasts minutes. The newest thing in this section and one of the cheapest.
Tiny Combat Arena — written by one person
Tiny Combat Arena, by Why485. Very Positive · 1,500+ reviews. Jets from around 1980 in a low-poly sandbox with a radar and a HUD that both actually work, and a campaign that generates its missions instead of scripting them. The smallest game in this section by review count and the one with the least fat on it.
Below, every live offer for Ace Combat 7, with each seller's own coupon already discounted.
The ones where you build the aircraft first
Four games in which flying is the reward rather than the activity. Trailmakers on its own has more Steam reviews than any of the three cockpit sims above.
Trailmakers — the biggest of the four
Trailmakers, by Flashbulb. Very Positive · 33,000+ reviews, at 92% positive. A block-based workshop where an aeroplane is whatever you bolted together and then have to land. Best in co-op, and the cheapest laugh on this page the moment somebody's wing comes off.
SimplePlanes — the one that is genuinely about aerodynamics
SimplePlanes, by Jundroo. Very Positive · 9,700+ reviews and a 69 on Metacritic. Ten years old and still the reference: you draw a fuselage, hang wings on it, and the simulation tells you honestly whether the thing flies. There is a large library of community aircraft, and that is most of the value after the first evening.
Aviassembly — nothing on this page is rated higher
Aviassembly, by Jelle Booij, released in April 2025. Overwhelmingly Positive · 9,100+ reviews, at 96% positive. You assemble aircraft from parts in a hangar and then take them up over a stylised landscape. Small, cheap, and the reviews are about as close to unanimous as this catalogue gets.
Flyout — the engineering one
Flyout, by Stonext Games. Very Positive · 2,100+ reviews. The most technical of the four: you shape the airframe, you build the engine, and it explains why the result does not work. Six live offers, about as few as anything on this page, so there is less price competition here than almost anywhere else in the list.
Three where you never leave the ground
The tag catches these because everything in them flies — you just never touch it. All three are cheap, all three are Very Positive, and they are the ones most likely to eat a weekend by accident.
Airport CEO — build the airport, then watch it jam
Airport CEO, by Apog Labs. Very Positive · 7,700+ reviews. You lay out stands, gates, baggage belts and security, and every failure is logistical: one badly placed checkpoint and the whole terminal backs up behind it. The biggest of the three, with 22 live listings.
Fly Corp — routes drawn on a world map
Fly Corp, by KishMish Games. Very Positive · 3,000+ reviews. An airline reduced to lines between cities and passengers who will not wait. Much lighter than Airport CEO, and the game on this page most suited to being played in ten-minute pieces.
Mini Airways — air traffic control, drawn as lines
Mini Airways, by CCC Games. Very Positive · 1,300+ reviews, at 92% positive. You are the tower: aircraft appear, you route them, and the runways fill up faster than you can clear them. The cleanest idea in this section and the cheapest way to find out whether the ground side interests you at all.
Two for goggles
FPV drone racing is a hobby with its own hardware, and these two are how people practise it without crashing anything expensive.
Liftoff — the practice tool that turned into a game
Liftoff: FPV Drone Racing, by LuGus Studios. Overwhelmingly Positive · 13,000+ reviews, at 95% positive, against a 67 on Metacritic: the widest gap between players and critics anywhere on this page, and who it is for explains all of it. Pilots use it to learn tracks and tune their rates; if you have never flown a quad, expect the first hour to be a wall.
The Drone Racing League Simulator — the official one
The Drone Racing League Simulator. Very Positive · 4,000+ reviews. Built around the actual DRL circuit, with its real tracks and its own events. Three live offers and nothing more, the fewest on this page, so the price barely moves.
And every live offer for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, the game here where the difference between sellers is worth the most money.
Why the price moves between shops
Almost everything on this page is a Steam key, so the game itself is identical wherever you buy it: what changes is the price, whether the seller has stock, and whether their own coupon applies to your basket. The listings above already have that coupon discounted, which is why our order does not always match what a shop shows on its own page. Across the eighteen there were 398 live listings from 25 active sellers when this page was written, and they are not spread evenly: Ace Combat 7 holds 75 of them and the DRL Simulator has three.
If you want one recommendation instead of eighteen: Ace Combat 7 if you want to be flying this evening, X-Plane 11 if you want to learn something, Aviassembly if the budget is ten euros, and Mini Airways if you would rather run the sky than be in it.
When you have picked, you can buy Ace Combat 7 key or buy X-Plane 11 key straight from the listings above.
I have been a gamer for as long as I can remember, and for the last 14 years I have been making life easier for other gamers. CEO and co-founder of Gocdkeys.
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