Pigs in Trees. Flight Control Meets Angry Birds… Use Piggy to Blast Birdies Mid-air in this Incredibly Fun Game
by Paul Wilks
Oct 27, 2011 10:53 AM –
Install
Pigs in Trees is a wonderfully fun game featuring some now quite familiar adversaries. Like Angry Birds, the warring factions are the pigs and the birds, but before you think this is some awful third party spin-off, think again. Pigs in Trees instead puts you on the side of the pigs and you have to defend your tree (this seems perfectly logical in the game) against incoming birds. Blended gameplay, fun graphics and high addictiveness make the game very compelling.
Price: Free
Tested on: HTC Desire HD
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Brilliant gameplay!
- Superb graphics!
- Cool weapons and bonuses!
- Lots of different enemies!
Cons
- Occasional crashes.
- Occasional graphical glitches.
- Inability to turn the sound off.
Features:
The wonder of Pigs in Trees is that it encapsulates a variety of different themes and genres. Most people will be kind of familiar with Angry Birds (unless you’ve been living in a sty) so the antagonism between the two species is pretty recognizable. There is a real-time strategy element to it as well, a semi-tower-defence-style of enemy ‘waves’. Add to this the gameplay- resemblent of line-drawing titles such as Flight Control or Air Control and you have a rather unique title that’s troughs of fun.
The basic premise of the game is to defend your tree from the woodpeckers. The tree is central to the gameplay area and the birds fly in from all sides. You must defend the tree via the use of a one-swine piggy airforce, which flies and swoops around the tree, targeting birds and shooting them out of the sky. To do this you must draw lines and specify targets for your pig-pilot. Then, and using a few different weapons, you must take out the birds before they reach your precious tree.
Gameplay starts easily, before picking up pace and becoming quite frantic in later waves. After each wave you get a run down of how many birds you have wiped out and usually a small tutorial based on new enemies, new weapons, etc. as they become available. And there are plenty of weapons to pick up and use against your feathered prey, there’s bombs, balloons and bullets aplenty and loads more besides.
You also get 4 different campaigns (broken up into seasons; Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring) and 75 levels to wade through so this is no ‘lite’ version. The game is free with ads although you can buy the ad-free version via an in-game link. I found the ads were not particularly intrusive and usually appear in between levels rather than persistently encroaching on the gameplay area.
The learning curve in Pigs in Trees is relatively steep but it’s huge amounts of fun and has that ‘one-more-go‘ factor about it. There are various bonuses and combos to win too so you can rack up quite a score and ranking.
I found the game is be genuinely engaging and fun. I did notice it very occasionally force-closes, and suffers from the odd graphical glitches, but usually when initially loading rather than mid-way through a level. These small issues aside it’s a cool game, with lots of character and challenging gameplay.
Watch on Mobile
-
-
Pigs in Trees – Typical in-game view
-
-
Pigs in Trees – Target bird in your plane by creating a trail to them
-
-
Pigs in Trees – Super weapons create a fantastic level of carnage
-
-
Pigs in Trees – Squares at bottom are extra weapons, repairs etc.
-
-
Pigs in Trees – Some attacks are beautifully devastating
-
-
Pigs in Trees – New weapon intro
-
-
Pigs in Trees – Multiplier dialogue
-
-
Pigs in Trees – Bird intros
-
-
Pigs in Trees – Level cleared screen
-
-
Pigs in Trees – End of day screen
-
-
Pigs in Trees – Level select
-
-
Pigs in Trees – Game Over
Fun Factor:
Pigs in Trees while incredibly silly is lots of fun. You have lots of weapons to collect and learn to use effectively and seemingly every wave introduces a new enemy; from birds that send a destructive echo from their beaks to zeppelins which spit out a poisonous gas-trail which you must avoid. There’s lots to remember and that’s perhaps why I felt the learning curve was a little steep. Regardless of this the game is fun to play and pretty chaotic.
Addictive:
Pigs in Trees has that easily pick-up-and-play element that can make games highly addictive. You can easily get quite absorbed and waste an hour or so just working you way through the levels. It’s tricky to learn all the weapons and different enemies but it’s a fun journey nonetheless.
Graphics:
The graphics are immaculately cute and cartoony but rich with detail and color. The bird explosions, leaves, balloons, gun fire, smoke, echoes, etc. leave the gameplay screen busy with animation and it’s all rendered very well visually. It’s perhaps not the very best graphics we can see on Android, but it’s of good quality and it suits the game well.
Sadly, very occasionally the game suffers from graphical glitches where the images do not load correctly. I found my pig was just a white square flying around bumping into other white squares. Also menus are not always responsive and, for example, you have to tap a level a couple of times for it to select.
Accelerometer, Vibration & Sound:
The sound is quite good, dainty little music track, plenty of explosions, squawks and oinks. You can turn the music off, but not the sound effects sadly and these might grate on you after a while.