This is what happened. I was sitting at my desk and Seamus says, “you know how sometimes games have such an endearing art style that you just want to spend time in the world?” Then I turned round – he was watching a youtube clip of a new iPhone game called Tiny Wings. I fell in love instantly.
If there is any justice in this cruel, cruel world, Tiny Wings will be the next game to go viral.
Tiny Wings is a game about trying to fly. But failing miserably. Like Canabalt, the game does all the moving for you, but you have control in the most subtle way possible – instead of touching to jump, you touch to dive and timing is everything. Dive at the correct opportune moment and you’ll gain massive momentum, sliding into the perfect launch, before soaring effortlessly through the sky.
Like all of the best games, Tiny Wings just feels amazing. The touch controls are perfectly tactile. When you time your dives correctly the game rewards you, when you mess it up your momentum stalls. It’s well balanced – it’s consistent. It’s so deceptively simple that it becomes compulsive. It’s ‘a one more go’ game. Even when you fail you smile, aware that it’s completely your fault.
Amazingly the quaint art style, which seems so calculated, is procedurally generated, changing every day in an attempt to make the game feel fresh, to encourage you to check back each day just to see how the world looks at that particular time.
Check it out – you won’t regret it. My current high score is 60,848. Come at me bro.
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