I’m going to be honest here, I wasn’t a big fan and supporter of mobile games at first. Chalk it up to the flood of Facebook games that made the jump to smart devices, the rise of Zynga in the mobile space, the attitude that some indie developers had and the abuse of micro-transaction from both the indies and the bigger publishers. Not to mention the lack of creativity once clone games started to pop up. However there are a few select games that I’ve encountered that I do enjoy playing when my Vita is charging. One of those games is Pigs Can’t Fly.
The premise is simple, you are a little piggy about to fly to piggy heaven with your friends after being made into bacon. But a 747 hits you as you are flying and sends you falling down to what seems to be hell. Now you have to go through 4 acts just to make it back. Can this game prove that pigs can really fly or are they doomed to forever be severed with a bake potato.
Crispy Bacon
Cute art design- It’s a bright eyed piggy with a halo and angel wings trying to escape hell, how more cute can you get? While it is cute it’s also eye catching, which is very important for a mobile game. Most people who play only mobile games will only look at the icon and any provided screen shots of the game before they download it. Luckily for Pigs Can’t Fly the art design for the game is done in a way that when potential players see it they’ll go aww and buy the game.
Simple controls- Being a platformer, the controls for Pigs Can’t Fly are pretty simple. On both the bottom left and right of the touch screen will be two wings. The wings control piggy’s movements: left wing has him flapping to the left and the right wing has him flapping to the right. Player will have to alternate left and right in order to move piggy through hell while avoiding dangers. Controlling piggy feels pretty solid and tight, just as any platformer should feel and are not overly complicated.
Fair difficulty spikes- One thing that most mobile plaformers tend to fail on is the difficulty spike as players progress. One moment the level is pretty easy and simple, the next the level becomes a deathtrap. This is a very cheap way to extend the replayability of a game. Pig Can’t Fly has a pretty moderate difficulty curve, increasing the challenge of level as the player progresses further and further along.
Bad Swine
Crashes from time to time- The version that I received for review was a test version, ie a beta version, of the game. So bugs and the occasional crash will happen, which in my case it crashed on me a few times. Now at the time of this writing, the game is already out so it may have already been patched.
For a platformer made for smart devices, Pigs Can’t Fly was pretty enjoyable. Other than having the game (an early build mind you) crashing, having a cute art design, simple controls and a fair difficulty spike, makes Pigs Can’t Fly an enjoyable time waster.
