Bad Piggies is a puzzle video game developed by Rovio Entertainment, and was the company's first spin-off of Angry Birds. The game launched on Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac on September 27, 2012. However, it can be found on iOS and Android. It was released for BlackBerry 10 on October 2013 and for Windows Phone on April 2014. Unlike the Angry Birds games, the player assists the minion pigs in building contraptions that travel on land and in air to collect pieces of a map to ultimately capture and take away the Angry Birds eggs. As of October 2012, Bad Piggies was the fastest-selling game on the Apple App Store, and the quickest one to reach the top of the app list in just three hours. In June 2014, Rovio made Bad Piggiesfree-to-play, since it previously had a purchase price.
Gameplay
The objective of the game is to build a contraption that transports the pig from a starting point to the finish line, usually indicated by a map. Such contraptions are made of wood and/or iron, as well as other objects such as wheels, two-liter bottles, umbrellas, motors, fans, springs, TNT, balloons, ropes, and rockets. Similar to Angry Birds, the player can earn up to three stars per level, but stars are not earned by scoring points. Instead, players automatically earn one star for completing the level. For each level, the other two stars can be obtained by clearing certain objectives, such as:
For example, on level 1-1, a player can earn three stars by completing the level, collecting a star on the playing field and by keeping the vehicle intact. On some levels, it is impossible to earn all three stars at once, so the player must play the level two or more times in order to obtain three stars. Additionally, "skulls" are placed throughout the levels, in which a player can unlock the skull level in the Sandbox by finding at least 10 out of the over 40 hidden skulls. After the release of the remaining 30 levels of "Rise and Swine", Rovio added a "Feed the King" mini-game, in order to earn power-ups in the game. The player obtains one or more dessert during gameplay, which they can use to feed King Pig to receive power-ups, such as sticky glue, motor boost, golden engineer, and super magnet; nuts, and coins. The King Pig only has a slight chance of giving a power-up. The only other way to get power-ups is by purchasing them in their store. In June 2016 with the change to free-to-play, there are 3 daily Loot Crates to collect parts for a new Custom Contraptions mode, which allows the player to change the appearance of parts used in the levels, ranging from a rarity of 1 to 3 stars; it has fullscreen video ads and a way to buy more parts.
In other media
Television
On April 11, 2014, Rovio released Piggy Tales, a Clay AnimationTV series based on the game, and a spin-off of Angry Birds Toons, which features a closer glimpse of the life of the minion pigs. A sequel was released on April 17, 2015 entitled Pigs At Work, in which features the pigs in short clips themed after construction.
Film
The game's main character appears in The Angry Birds Movie, going by the name Ross and voiced by Tony Hale. He is one of Leonard's closest accomplices in the Birds' schemes.
Reception
The game has received positive reviews with a Metacritic score of 83/100 based on 24 reviews. Mark Brown of Pocket Gamer gave the game a Silver Award and called it "creative, addictive, and absolutely packed with content", while lamenting that it felt "a little too safe and predictable". IGN rated it the bestmobile game of 2013.
