Tiny Wings

Tiny Wings
(Developed by Andreas Illiger)
Available for: iOS
Price: 99 cents
Originally published: March 

Within days of its February 2011 launch, Tiny Wings soared to the top of the App Store's Paid Apps charts, and for good reason: The game is sweetly simple but endlessly addictive. So addictive, in fact, that almost a year later, it remains the mobile game to which I return most often, making it an easy selection for Best App of 2011 honors.

The name makes Tiny Wings seem like little more than an Angry Birds ripoff, and without a doubt, the plump, wide-eyed bird hero looks like he emerged from a nest somewhere on the Rovio Mobile family tree. But the similarities end there. Tiny Wings isn't even a puzzle game; with its candy-colored, psychedelic landscapes (evoking the great cartoonist Jim Woodring) and hypnotic musical theme, the app doesn't challenge the brain so much as it massages it, yielding maximum fun from minimal user interaction. It's also oddly bittersweet, even poignant: Because the bird's overstuffed body far outweighs his stubby wings, he can only take to the skies in short bursts, leveraging the peaks and valleys of his hillside home to temporarily defy gravity.

In both concept and execution, Tiny Wings is perfect for the iPhone form factor: Developer Andreas Illiger navigates the opportunities and obstacles inherent in mobile gaming with precision and grace, delivering a rich, nuanced user experience optimized for bite-sized consumption. Gamers direct the bird's progress via easy-to-master one-touch control, gobbling up coins, completing tasks and exploring new islands along the way. Further bolstering its dreamlike milieu, Tiny Wings employs procedural graphics to offer gamers a new look every day; software updates also have helped keep the game fresh, bringing support for Game Center and OpenFeint integration.

Close to a year removed from his entrance into the App Store, Illiger still hasn't divulged what's coming next. Tiny Wings will be extraordinarily difficult to top, of course. But if the game has taught us anything, it's that no height is impossible to reach.