Angry Birds is now a household name. Even Rovio (the company responsible for the ultra-successful bird-flinging app) is a logo as familiar as EA’s. But today we’ll have to add another bit of vocabulary to our lexicon. Prepare yourselves: Bad Piggies has arrived.
We’ve known about Bad Piggies for a while, but only a lucky few have actually played the game. Quite a bit hinges on it. As you justly may have forgotten, Amazing Alex (Rovio’s other game) hasn’t exactly made a splash. According to Finnish analyst firm Alekstra, Rovio’s revenue is dropping like a rock as of late.
In response, Ville Heijari (VP Franchise Development) had this to say:
“Rovio today is highly diversified among games, consumer goods, and other entertainment areas. Throughout 2012, we have had a seen very healthy growth across our whole business, and we are not dependent on any single revenue stream.”
But let’s not focus too much on the negative — today is Bad Piggies’ birthday, and it’s cause for celebration. After all, it’s the first time that we’ll be empathizing with the long-time antagonists.
The game is still very much based around physics, like Angry Birds and Cut The Rope. However, there’s no destruction here. Instead, your goal is get the Bad Piggies from Point A on a map to Point B.
You do this by constructing various contraptions — vehicles, really — that help the Piggies travel. Remember, pigs can’t actually fly, despite the information to the contrary.
As you travel through the map, you grab various collectibles (essentially the equivalent of eggs in Angry Birds) and are scored based on the three-star system.
The same things that made Angry Birds a huge success are present here in the Piggie version. You can complete levels relatively quickly, it isn’t all that hard to beat the levels, yet it’s still a mentally challenging game in terms of physics.
The game is available now in the Apple App Store and Google Play for $.99. Here’s hoping the birds don’t get angrier as these pigs try to steal the show.