Tiny Wings Review ~ Video Huevos

Not all games are the “wait in line for 12 hours”, triple-A blockbusters that we all love so much. Some are small, simple, discrete. They quietly emerge into our over saturated marketplaces and make their way to the top. Enter the iPhone App Store. To make it here is to truly make something great. There are a torrent of games that make in into the store and only those that are truly unique become popular. Take games like Angry Birds and Doodle Jump. These games are in a word...stupid. But, here we are. We the people have absolutely no shame. We love our stupid handheld games. If you take a nice unique idea and apply it to an existing genre, we will accept it. So I give you, people of the world, Tiny Wings. You have always dreamed of flying - but your wings are tiny.

In Tiny Wings, you play a fat bird with very...wait...wait for it...tiny wings. He loves to fly so he launches himself down a hill on his stomach to be launched into the blue yonder. Now we’ve all played games like this, you have to get as far as you can without violating some set rule. Here, the rule is based on racing the sun around the world. You have to keep flying forward fast enough so you can beat the sun and remain in daytime for as long as possible, because once the night begins, the bird goes to sleep. You have only one control, wings out or wings in, and you’d be amazed at the complexity that can be generated from such simplicity.

Gameplay

8.5

This game is played using a single gesture, the touch. When you are not touching the screen, our bird friend spreads his wings and funny head feathers to glide as best he can to increase his flight time and decrease his “weight”. When you tap the screen, he streamlines, pulling in his wings and feathers to increase weight and drop like a stone. This makes the game like a constant sledding run. You touch and hold the screen to slide quickly down the constant hills, then let go as you come back up to vault up into the air off then next hill. Timing this whole sequence perfectly makes you fly faster and higher. The physics engine that makes this all work feels very natural and makes this game very easy to pick up and become good at, as all good iPhone games should be.

The game tracks your score based on how far you can get before the sun catches up. Extra points and multipliers are awarded for height, timing, and speed, as well as the gathering of coins that are spread around some of hills and the number of islands you can reach in the time period.

Each game is separated into islands that last about thirty seconds. Each has its own color scheme and hill type. They may be long sweeping short hills or choppy tall hills. These are the closest things this game has to levels, since the hill combinations do get more tricky to navigate over time.

Video / Audio

9.0

This game is painfully cute. Everything is brightly colored and all of the bird’s sounds are very reminiscent of a certain Italian plumber. The levels are procedurally generated and the colors of each island change every day, also procedurally generated. It also features some very soothing jazzy electronic music, almost like elevator tunes, but more epic if that makes any sense. It picks up and slows down based on the time of day. Basically, this games does its best to keep it simple and sticks to a specific aesthetic. Playful and silly. In a word full of zombies and exploding heads, there’s something refreshing about the whole style of it all.

Story

Uh, I think this is kind of self explanatory. This is a puzzle game, and features no real story. You’re a bird with freakishly small wings. EOF.

Content

7.5

Tiny Wings is incredibly addictive and has to its credit, an entirely procedurally generated set of levels. It constantly keeps track of your “bests”. Best multiplier, furthest island, and highest scores. Since this is still some pretty unchanging gameplay, it also has objectives that you can try. Complete the three that are presented to you and get the next upgrade to your nest. This is really just an image on the start screen, but its kind cool and serves as that nice little “carrot-on-a-stick” to keep you playing. In the end, this game relies mostly on our addiction to stupid games.

Huevos Factor

9.0

OK, I’ll be honest, this is serious crapper-ware. With short games, lasting a few minutes at the max, it’s really made for getting in, playing a quick game, and getting out. The thing that makes me love this game is really the rock solid belief in simplicity and that you don’t need 3D graphics and chainsaws to make a great game. When it comes down to it, you only need a good idea and a strong vision to an end. No gimmicks required. This is a really great game.

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