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Home / Reviews / Apps and Games / iPhone & iPad / App of the week: Pigeon Wings review

App of the week: Pigeon Wings review

MarioKart meets ALONE… and Tiny Wings in this madcap arcade racer

You probably thought pigeons mostly spent their days decorating city centre monuments in their own special way. But it turns out they’ve been biding their time, waiting to defend humanity against the worst of its own.

In Pigeon Wings, an unhinged and extremely rich bad guy has decided to destroy East Megalopolis, and it’s up to the heroic Pigeon to stop him. For some reason, this mostly happens by racing other pigeons. Using tiny pigeon planes.

Winging it

The action’s side on. You hold the lower-left of the screen to speed up, the lower-right to boost, and tilt your device forwards and backwards to change altitude. You may hate tilty games, but Pigeon Wings feels natural, immediately clicks, and makes you grumpy when returning to similar titles that lack such nuanced controls.

Not that you do so immediately, because a game of Pigeon Wings is best followed by a little lie down. It plays at a ridiculously breakneck pace, with Pigeon’s plane belting along twisty courses. And there’s plenty of potential for race-ending crashes – you’ll die a lot until learning a safe route through each bite-sized challenge.

It also turns out taking the chequered flag is for the glory of battling massive enemy craft, in periodic shooty bouts against the antagonist’s forces. These provide a nice change of pace – if being blown to smithereens time and again can be considered something of a breather.

Pie in the sky

Pie in the sky

DNA of other games lurks: the pace and slipstreaming echo MarioKart, while the exhilarating horizontal madness suggests ALONE… is a firm favourite over at Pigeon Wings HQ.

But Pigeon Wings has a very distinct personality of its own. The daft wide-eyed pigeon looks entertainingly ridiculous piloting its tiny plane, and absurdist cut scenes find the villain getting increasingly furious with his feathery nemesis, who just sits there and says nothing in response to the jibes and threats sent its way. You know, because it’s a pigeon.

Downsides? It’s a bit short – but an endless mode’s on the way – and takes no prisoners in terms of difficulty. Nonetheless, Pigeon Wings is an immediate, entertaining, silly indie game that’s the perfect fit for mobile.

Pigeon Wings is available for iOS. An Android version is under consideration

Stuff Says…

Score: 5/5

A superb, silly, playable slice of arcade racing that’s aviary good game

Good Stuff

Blazingly fast

Totally ridiculous

Great mash-up of genres

Bad Stuff

Races in the dark can annoy

Profile image of Craig Grannell Craig Grannell Contributor

About

I’m a regular contributor to Stuff magazine and Stuff.tv, covering apps, games, Apple kit, Android, Lego, retro gaming and other interesting oddities. I also pen opinion pieces when the editor lets me, getting all serious about accessibility and predicting when sentient AI smart cookware will take over the world, in a terrifying mix of Bake Off and Terminator.

Areas of expertise

Mobile apps and games, Macs, iOS and tvOS devices, Android, retro games, crowdfunding, design, how to fight off an enraged smart saucepan with a massive stick.

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