Last Thursday there was a new game from Rovio – Bad Piggies, which just 4 hours after the release became # 1 in the Top Paid iPhone USA. Has the Finnish company managed to make a new hit that will finally displace Angry Birds? Let’s figure it out.
Firstly, the hit is not so new – in the sense that both the genre and the characters are borrowed from the previous game. And that’s what provided her with a meteoric rise: the well-known funny pig face is depicted on the icon. Agree, it immediately attracts the attention of fans of “birds”. In addition, it was properly registered by Apple.
The game itself, at first glance, makes a pleasant impression. The player’s task is to deliver the pig to the finish line by means of objects from which various vehicles can be created.
The interface and graphics in the game have been simplified. If we compare it with Angry Birds, we can note that there are fewer such small objects as flowers, stones, clouds, trees, sticks sticking out of the ground, etc. However, there are several different locations in the game; there is a “sandbox”, the levels of which open during the passage of the usual levels.
To do this, players have to build flying/crawling/rolling/rotating or crashing devices. For each level, you can get three stars, but here, unlike the “angry birds”, these stars must be collected literally: they can lie in some hard-to-reach corner, pit or hang in the air.
Overall, the game has potential: it can “tighten” players with its diversity and good physics. Each level can be completed in different ways, giving free rein to the imagination. Besides, the game makes you think.
Those who are too lazy to think can use in-app purchase. By the way, there is no free version of Bad Piggies – only a paid one is available for iPhone for $0.99 and for iPad for $2.99. And at the same time, as we have already mentioned, there are in-app purchases: for $1.99, $5.99 and $9.99, you can buy 10, 35 and 65 so-called “mechanical pigs” (a term from the description of the game in iTunes), an analogue of Mighty Eagle, which help to pass the level.
However, there is an opportunity to get help for free: three pigs are given for liking the game on Facebook.
By the way, there is another way. Third-party developer Pei Lei Holdings has released a free app called Walkthrough for Bad Piggies & Amazing Alex (Cheat Guide). This app includes completing the levels of both games stated in the title.
By tradition, Rovio did not translate the game into Russian: either they do not consider the Russian market worth the localization costs, or they are sure that the puzzle does not need translation. It is worth noting that the Russian description of the game is available in the App Store, and it was clearly not Googltranslate.
The project has already received more than 250 reviews, many of which are positive, although there are also negative ones – about every 10th. The overall score is 4.5, which, you will agree, is good. And if you pay attention to the positions in the tops (the iPad version, for example, took the first line of Top Grossing in 20 countries), then we can conclude that everything worked out for Rovio.
One question remains open: will the company ever be able to do something unrelated to birds, or is it doomed to repeat the same story in different ways? However, as long as the players are happy and willing to pay, the answer does not matter much.