It’s hard to believe that the makers of Angry Birds, Rovio, was once a struggling Finnish mobile development company. They’ve come a long way now, and Angry Birds has evolved from a mobile game, to consoles, PCs, toys, clothing and products and much, much more.
Ofcourse even with regular updates, folks thought the game was slowly getting a bit stale, which is when Rovio released their Angry Birds Seasons game, followed by Angry Birds Rio, and then after a while, Angry Birds Space which many considered the first actual sequel since it tweaked the classic formula a bit. Rovio then branched out a little bit and re-released a game called Casey’s Contraptions as Amazing Alex which was fun but not quite as addictive as their most famous game to date.
Trying to reinvent said game, Rovio decided it was time to let folks know the Pigs side of the story, and that’s where Bad Piggies comes into the equation.
Bad Piggies has the same Angry-Birds-Like brief comic book animation that let’s you know the story behind what you’re doing. The Pigs are eager to steal the Birds Eggs and as such have drawn up a huge, clever plan on how to get to them. Unfortunately though their plan gets sucked into a fan, shredded into tiny little bits and blown across various parts of the planet. Or atleast various levels of the game environment.
Unfortunately for them, they’ve got no feet to walk around collecting parts of the now-shredded plan, so they try to build up various contraptions to get them around, and collect the scraps. While the story sounds a little complicated in comparison to Angry Birds, the game play is simple: You build the contraption for the Pig, and try to get them from the start of the level to the finish where the piece of the plan is lying.
The game starts off nice and slow to ease you into the core building mechanics that you’ll need to master to pass each level, and the hint book that comes in handy to see what object does what.
One of the first levels requires you to build a simple car with three wooden boxes placed side-by-side and a wheel on either side. If there’s any extra objects to attach you can just drag them from the lower bar into the grid onscreen. Once you’re done constructing your vehicle, you place the pig inside, hit the checkmark and hope for the best. If things go well, the pig will reach the finish line eventually.
As you go on playing the game, it builds up on this. The grid eventually gets larger so that you can build bigger contraptions with more components, like adding an air-pump-thing that you squeeze (using a virtual button press of course) to send out a puff of air which can move your vehicle, or balloons that you can tack onto your vehicle to fly, etc. You get propellers, engines, more wheels and all sorts of things as you progress through the game, which can result in some very creative machines created, heh.
If you’ve ever played a physics game before, or even a contraption-building game like Amazing Alex, you’ll be able to quickly understand the concept behind how things work in Bad Piggies. Some of the earlier levels are incredibly easy to pass, but as the game progresses, things get even harder as you have different goals to complete to get all three stars, and more complicated machines to get around.
Interestingly, to get three stars in Bad Piggies, you have to complete actual goals. It’s no longer score based like it used to be in Angry Birds, rather is more like the star system in Cut The Rope. You’re told exactly what you have to do to get each star in a level (you can pinch to zoom out at a level to see them) and they can be anything from finishing the level under a time limit, to collecting any stars lying around the level.
The most fun challenges though, are when you’re required to not use a certain component in your machine, and still pass the level, or to finish a level without any damage happening to your machine. They can be really hard to unlock and even a little tricky some times. At some point you get really frustrated but like Angry Birds had the Mighty Eagle to come in and help you finish a level, Bad Piggies have the Mechanics, who can build up your machine for you incase you’re not sure what to create to pass the level. You get 3 mechanics for free just by liking the Bad Piggies Facebook page, but after that you’re kinda screwed. I’m not sure why Rovio chose to do this (well, actually it’s pretty obvious) but if you want to hire more mechanics to help out, you’ll have to buy them, starting from $1.99 for ten.
Initially, it’s all about what machine you construct but as the game progresses, level by level, it becomes more about how you construct, execute and pilot your machine. As we demonstrated in the video above, sometimes it’s as easy as just hitting play, but some times you have to know when to use the propeller and when to shut it off, or when to open an umbrella as a make-shift parachute and when it should be closed.
Speaking of which, there are 90 levels to play through, which will easily take a couple hours to complete. There’s more levels coming soon, as Rovio tends to in upcoming updates, which itself is a good enough reason to get this game. But if you’ve finished all the levels, dont worry too much because then there’s the fun Sandbox Mode.
In the sandbox levels, you basically have a giant grid to build a huge machine with various objects, but instead of the usual ‘reach the finish line’ objective, you have stars to pick up in a pretty long, complicated level. It’s really tough to master, but incredibly addictive to try and finish.
The Conclusion:-
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Bad Piggies is a really fun, addictive game.
Rovio’s managed to get the pick-up-and-play accessibility of Angry Birds while still managing to take the franchise forward in a new direction. I dont quite think it’s as Simple as Angry Birds, and as such it might not appeal to younger kids like the feathery game did, but it’s still very recommendable and deserves to be a part of your mobile game collection.
