More pigs! More potions!
April 6, 2012 9:08 AM   Subscribe

Just in time for Flash Fun Friday, they came out with a sequel to Pigs Can Fly (previously): Pigs Will Fly! Enjoy!
posted by phunniemee (14 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Ye gods, the balloon level is infuriating.
posted by zarq at 9:21 AM on April 6, 2012


I think these games are very clever. The difficulty on the sequel ramps up pretty fast though, it's probably best to play the original first. Although there seems to be a bug with it that causes it to forget recorded moves sometimes. And it also does a bad job of explaining the time travel gameplay, I had to go to the walkthrough to figure out why the green blocks in level 2 went back to their original positions when I clicked the green bottle again.

IN case someone else is confused and doesn't figure it out from other sources: when you click on a bottle, the game starts recording your moves. When you click on the bottle again the world is returned to the state at the beginning of the level, but (assuming that bug I mentioned didn't trigger) you haven't lost what you've just done. When you click on another potion, the game will replay your actions with the first bottle while you perform actions with the second. Before long you're having to make actions with bottles in preparation for other actions you'll have to make with other bottles.

It might be hard to wrap your brain around at first, but bugs and lack of explanation notwithstanding, the first game does a good job of slowly building you up towards doing more complicated things.
posted by JHarris at 9:44 AM on April 6, 2012


It's not a bug, it's a feature. Once you use the green potion, you can't use green again and keep the recorded moves. You have to start from scratch.

The potions are one-time use deals.

The sequel is definitely a bit trickier than the original game, though.
posted by phunniemee at 9:55 AM on April 6, 2012


I love how this game collapses the 4th dimension (if that is actually what it is doing).
posted by charred husk at 9:57 AM on April 6, 2012


It's not a bug, it's a feature. Once you use the green potion, you can't use green again and keep the recorded moves.

No, what happened with me is the game not recording the moves the first time. When I click on another potion, the Green potion's moves are not always played back. In that case, I have to go back to Green and rerecord the darn things.
posted by JHarris at 10:08 AM on April 6, 2012


Oh, huh. I haven't run into it yet, then. Lucky me!
posted by phunniemee at 10:23 AM on April 6, 2012


Thinking about it... the problem may actually be my system, which for some reason I'm getting poor Flash performance in Firefox. I'm thinking maybe it's resulting in reading extra clicks on the potions, which would cause it to discard the recorded mouse data. That makes it into more of a subtle design flaw in edge situations than a bug.
posted by JHarris at 10:54 AM on April 6, 2012


I had that happen once, JHarris, so I can confirm that bug exists. It's not very common, though.

Really enjoyed that one, phunniemee, thanks. :)

A little bit more explanation: You're playing through the same time sequence with multiple 'yous', kind of like Chronotron. Your previous actions are recorded and played back. But, unlike Chronotron, you don't have unlimited playthroughs... you have one 'you' per potion. When you're the blue potion, you can interact with blue objects; when you're the green potion, you can interact with green objects, and so on. Each time you click on the same potion, your previous moves with that potion are undone, and you are now replacing them with a new recording.

Some of the levels are easiest approached by recording alternate colors, over and over, moving a little bit further each time. You might move Blue Box 1, and stop. Then you switch to green, and move Green Box 1, and stop. Then you switch back to blue, move Blue Box 1, wait for the green cursor to move Green Box 1, and then move Blue Box 2. Then you switch back to green, wait for the blue cursor to move its first box, move Green Box 1 like before, wait for the blue cursor to move Blue Box 2, and then move Green Box 2. By recording over and over, you can coordinate more and more intricate actions with just alternating colors. There's still only 2 "you's" that are active, but each one has been recorded several times, each time doing a little more, reacting to the other "you".

If you knew right where to click, you could record all the moves for each color in one pass, but you'd have to be very precise, and be clicking on things that aren't there yet, or are blocked from moving in some way. The reason to alternate and build up is so that you can see what you're clicking when you click it.

I particularly enjoyed the sense of iteration and approaching a solution. That's really a very clever little game.
posted by Malor at 12:47 PM on April 6, 2012 [1 favorite]


Great use of the "yayilikepigs" tag.

I never played the first one until I saw this post. Having just finished it, it's time for #2. I shall report back.
posted by SpiffyRob at 2:13 PM on April 6, 2012


Heh, I like how 1-5 are pretty much identical to levels from the first one, and then 6 seems like it is too, but the game's all like "Nuh uh, piggy's got a brand new bag."
posted by SpiffyRob at 2:23 PM on April 6, 2012


Wow, definitely much harder this time around. Level 10 was the first time I'd ever not had a pretty clear idea of what needed to happen from the get-go.

Level 14 is the first one I'm aware of that might actually have multiple solutions. (I never used the green wheel, but I suspect a solution that uses it exists.)

Oof, 18 is killing me. Need a break.
posted by SpiffyRob at 2:55 PM on April 6, 2012


18 is where I stopped, too. Damn those spinning wheels!

(I used the green one in Level 14!)
posted by phunniemee at 3:16 PM on April 6, 2012


These were fun games, and I thought they were a clever combination of ideas I've not yet seen used together. I hadn't heard of the original game before yesterday, so I got to enjoy both at the same time. I managed to solve all the levels in both games, and the level of the challenge was quite appropriate for a casual game. The last level of Pigs Will Fly was definitely the hardest.

It's really nice how the game mechanics support experimentation, and it's a refreshing change from many games that you don't actually need to reset the level that often, but you can just fix the mistakes in your attempted solution by redoing the parts that don't work yet. (Of course, sometimes it's easier to reset.)
posted by tykky at 10:20 PM on April 6, 2012


I picked up the Android version, and at least on my phone, I'm not very impressed. The targets are absolutely tiny, and extremely difficult to click on with a finger. And then you can't see them anymore, because my finger, at least, is much bigger than almost anything I tried to drag (particularly the pig).
posted by Malor at 3:19 AM on April 8, 2012


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