Skip to main content

Hands On: Rovio’s Bad Piggies has that addictive Angry Birds magic

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Mobile games developer Rovio has created quite the path for itself. The absurdly popular Angry Birds series took players everywhere from tropical islands to outer space, but even that doesn’t capture the astronomical growth that the multimedia company has had. They’ve expanded to a full-blown phenomenon, selling everything from plush toys to tickets to their new European theme park. Now they’re getting back to their roots by creating a spin-off title from the Angry Birds franchise. Bad Piggies takes the villains of the vengeful feathered flyers and makes them the stars.

The goal of Bad Piggies is rather simple: collect pieces of a map that will lead you to your treasure — in this case, bird eggs. In that sense, the game must be a bit of a prequel to the Angry Birds franchise. This game should show what makes the birds so darn angry in the first place. To accomplish the task at hand, players will have to build some basic forms of transportation to bring the bodiless swine to their destination.

Bad Piggies create your vehicle
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Players start out each level with a selection of pieces to create a cart that will carry the pigs to a lost piece of the map. The parts players have range from wheels and boxes for basic wheeled carts to spinning fans and shaken up soda bottles that propel the carts forward. Some levels even have balloons and umbrellas to change vertical direction. Once a primitive craft has been built, you have to pilot it across the landscape to reach your goal.

Recommended Videos

There are three different goals on any given level. One is to finish with your pig intact, which is reasonable enough considering the game isn’t called “Slaughter House.” The second and third objectives vary from time-based challenges, to finishing a level without using the fan or propelling piece of your build, to collecting a star that is off the beaten path. Accomplishing any of the tasks at hand will result in a star reward. 

Bad Piggies driving
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Bad Piggies crash and burn
Image used with permission by copyright holder

While the gameplay is significantly different than that of Angry Birds and the mode of transportation has changed from slingshot to player-built vehicle, the method of accomplishment through trial and error remains. You’ll want to play through levels multiple times to achieve that elusive three star rating, and every attempted build will give a different result. That’s where the true replay-ability factor lies and it’s something that few do as well as Rovio.

Also similar to Angry Birds is the fact that early levels don’t really have multiple ways of winning. These levels serve as an introduction and have a very clear path to completion. In Bad Piggies, you’ll be given a certain area in which you can build and place pieces. At the start, that area is very limited and only allows for certain types of designs to be made. It expands as the game goes on, opening itself up to unique creations and clever usage of provided parts. This especially is true once one earns enough stars to get into Sandbox mode. All the limitations are dropped here, and players can take control of any part in the game to make some absurd yet awesome creations. That appears to be where the true potential is in this title. Unfortunately, the Sandbox mode is currently quite small in comparison to the fully fleshed out missions of standard play. 

While it’s not entirely fair to do, Bad Piggies will be compared to Angry Birds because it’s from the same developer and is in the same universe. It definitely is not the same game. The pace is slower and requires a bit more thought. When things don’t work properly, it’s also considerably more frustrating than Angry Birds, where one could simply restart and begin firing away again. In a way, it is quite similar to Amazing Alex, Rovio’s other recent non-Birds mobile game launch, which requires a lot more planning. Restarting in Bad Piggies means going back to the drawing board and hoping your pieced together project will function how you imagined. The groundwork of the game is good. Rovio has laid a solid foundation for a title that begs for more levels — especially in Sandbox mode. While there’s a little bit of hand holding in the early going, Bad Piggies thrives when it lets go of the playable tutorial style and lets players and their imagination run wild.

Bad Piggies is available for iPhone/iPod for $1, iPad for $3, Android for free, and Mac for $5.

AJ Dellinger
AJ Dellinger is a freelance reporter from Madison, Wisconsin with an affinity for all things tech. He has been published by…
The best PlayStation launch games, ranked
best ps1 games sony ps1

The most important time in a console's life is its launch. This is when a new piece of hardware needs to prove that it is worth investing in, which always comes down to games. Launch titles are rarely the best games on the system, although some of Nintendo's launch games buck that trend, but at least need to show off what the system can do. PlayStation always had a secondary selling point with its consoles, such as doubling as a CD player or DVD player, so it is interesting to speculate how successful those early consoles would've been judged solely on their games. We now have launch titles from the PS1 all the way up to the PS5 (and soon to be PS6) to look back on with fresh eyes to see just how good those first games were.

Air Combat - PlayStation 1

Read more
The Switch 2 is the perfect example of why console launches don’t feel special anymore
The Switch 2 being unboxed.

I will never forget the unbearable excitement I felt on that early morning on my 7th birthday. It was 1998, and Pokémon was the biggest thing in the world, especially for an elementary school kid like me. Except that I didn't have a single card or game to my name. In fact, I didn't even have a Game Boy. That, plus Pokémon, was the only thing I asked for that birthday, and I knew I would get it.

I can still remember lying awake half the night, unable to sleep while my imagination ran wild with unrealistic machinations of what the game would be like. I woke up just as early to the sounds of my parents and sister setting up decorations downstairs and bided my time before I could go down. It was a school day, but they could sense my excitement well in advance and agreed to let me open one thing before school.

Read more
If the leaks are true, ROG Xbox Ally’s price could be anything but an ally
The ROG Xbox Ally UI.

There's still a lot we don't know about the ROG Xbox Ally, but a potential price has leaked that shatters any hope of it being affordable. First seen by 3djuegos on the ASUS Store, the ROG Xbox Ally was listed at 599 Euro (roughly $700 USD) while the ROG Xbox Ally X was listed for $899 Euro (roughly $1,050 USD). The listing appears to have been created by accident, but those price points raise eyebrows.

ASUS prices its own handheld PCs around that same price, with the 2023 ROG Ally landing at $500 and $650, depending on the version. While that's a reasonable price point compared to other handhelds on the market (like the $1,000 MSI Claw 8 AI+), it's still significantly more than a base-level Steam Deck.

Read more