Tiny Wings

Title: Tiny Wings
Platform Played On: iPhone
Release Date: February 18, 2011
Date Played: Summer 2011
Time Played: 1 hour
Completed (Y/N): No
Score: 2/5

Opinion:
For some reason there was a bunch of buzz about Tiny Wings when it launched in the winter of 2011. It was the next big thing after Angry Birds, and it seemed that everyone and their mother was playing it. Naturally I had to check it out.

The premise of Tiny Wings is simple. You are a little birdy dude that cant fly. So instead of flapping it's wings the little birdy uses momentum and hills to glide forward (cant imagine how that would work in real life). As the player you have only one action and that is to force the bird to the ground. If done right the bird will use the hills for greater momentum to go faster and faster. If you are too slow the time runs out and you lose.

Under all that Tiny Wings boils down to the following. It is a side scroller with the goal of getting to the end as fast as possible and at the same time collecting as many little suns as you can (basically coins) on the way. The level generation is procedural, which ensures that you can not win through memorization or muscle memory.

Personally after a couple of rounds I fell completely bored with Tiny Wings. It was extremely repetitive and the rewards seemed lackluster. After giving it a few tries I felt no desire to keep playing.

Even those that really enjoyed Tiny Wings seemed to get bored of it pretty quickly. Perhaps that is the nature of the games in the "Canabalt" genre. It looks great, and runs smoothly; however lack of variety makes it boring rather quickly. If games like Canabalt, or Jetpack Joyride are your type of thing, then perhaps Tiny Wings is worth checking out; however if you never liked those games, Tiny Wings is unlikely to change your mind.