iPhone Game Of The Week: Tiny Wings

We’ve used the old adage that pictures paint a thousand words, but here it’s truer than ever: Tiny Wings, a cute little 59p game from Andreas Illiger [App Store link] looks beautiful, and it is: it might be procedurally generated, but those visuals are lovely.  It’s also incredibly rewarding: the simple one button gameplay might suggest an easy ride, but as we know from similar titles like Canabalt it’s not only very satisfying to get a high score, but each soar of the bird comes with its own little smile.

So, with obviously small wings comes the inability to truly fly – holding down a finger folds your wings (pre-loading a jump) and releasing it opens them out, time it right and you can use the various hills as ramps, perfecting both jumps and landings as you get better at the game.  And the best bit?  The levels change every day, the randomly generated landscapes developed on the fly depending on the date.

Other nice touches include the ability to upgrade your nest by ticking off little challenges, and unlocking more islands as you go.  It’s such a cool little game that we can’t help but recommend it – it’s clearly good looking but addictive too, and although there’s no Game Center yet there is OpenFeint, so at least you can see how you stack up against other players.  And it runs just fine on older iPhones and iPod Touches, not something you can say about a lot of games, eh?

It’s tricky to master (you’ve only got so long before nightfall, at which point Tiny Wings falls asleep) but oh so good when you do.  Buy it.