Note: Pocket Planes has now been released. You can download it here for free on the Mac App Store.

One of the biggest iOS celebrities on the App Store is Pocket Planes, a free flight time management game from indie-developers where you manage your own airline company. As you upgrade your fleet of planes, and deliver more and more tourists and crazy cargo, you can purchase new airports in main cities around the world, expanding your airline empire.

Pocket Planes is well known for its unique pixel-art (initially seen in their first title Tiny Towers), and hopes to make a similar sort of splash on the Mac game market. As an added incentive to current owners of the smaller counterpart, the Mac version of Pocket Planes will include a new X10 Maple Pro plane. Already a Pocket Planes addict? Well, progress can be transferred between the Mac and iOS version of the game, so you won’t have to start all over again.

My only doubts are that the freemium model is a shaky business on non-mobile devices. We saw that with Let’s Golf 3, which bombed on the Mac App Store because of overly-expensive in-app purchases and fast-approaching paywalls. Thankfully, Nimblebit has a reputation to create games that don’t hassle players to spend money, and don’t prevent them from enjoying the whole game without playing a dime.

Pocket Planes will be releasing this Thursday for free. We’ll have a review on our experiences with the game once it releases.