InterAction Studios may have made waves throughout gaming’s virtual galaxy with Chicken Invaders, but their true shining moment of creativity comes in the form of Piggly: Christmas Edition. This is an endearing platform title that offers players a little bit more than the standard point-to-point platforming paradigm for which most side-scrollers are known. If you are new to all this and want to learn what Piggly is all about and what it offers then you can click on http://109.199.126.245/.
The game has a rather simple story, not that it needed anything more than a simple story, but players are in charge of helping a homemaker make apple pies. Players bounce around as Mrs. Piggly to gather up apples and return them home. Now if only the game was as simple as the description sounds.
This colorful animal adventure starts off easily enough with a group of tutorial levels to help ease players into the game’s bustling array of fun platforming antics, while latter stages toss in quite a bit of strategy and challenge. Stomping on worms heads help clear a path for rolling the physics-based apples around, while timing the appearance of hungry rabbits keep players from being too hasty. That’s just a few of the many trials and traps that await players during their platforming journey.
Now some readers may think this petty, but there’s a huge flaw in the game’s logic of “getting home.” Mainly because at the end of every stage Piggly must return the apples to her house even though she travels from one stage to the next. It means that Mrs. Piggly either has a traveling house, or she and the kids build a new house at the end of each stage. Again, it’s a flaw in the logic of returning “home” but it’s not like it detracts anything from the game.
As some gamers know, the most important part of any platform game is the controls: how well do they respond and how tight are the movements in accordance with the button pressing. In this case, I can definitely vouch for Piggly: Christmas Edition maintaining a steady response system for the controls. My only complaint is that — much like Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet — Piggly has a very floaty feel for the character movements, which can sometimes result in over-compensating for some jumping segments. This is especially present when trying to scale over rocks and getting the heroine up hills and slopes. Otherwise, the free-feeling controls work quite well for this game.
A plus-side to the aforementioned floaty controls is that it melds almost perfectly with the milky-smooth framerate. The meager system requirements keep the game flowing as if it’s sliding on butter, so even casual gamers who are still hanging on to an old PIII system can find solace in Piggly: Christmas Edition’s visual performance. I think what makes this so noteworthy is that the game actually looks superb; high-resolution sprites and a fine array of special effects round off the game’s visual aesthetic with the startling appeal. Honestly, this game actually looks a lot better than most games that appear on the Nintendo Wii.
Another high point for this game is the sound effects and musical score. While many independent titles fall victim to a cheesy sound scheme and sometimes inappropriate music, it’s safe to say that Piggly sticks to an auricular palette that suits the game’s atmosphere and themes. Holiday music fills up each stage in a tranquil way, while environmental and stage effects are kept mostly to a minimum.
When it comes to replay, InterAction ensures that players who are eager to appropriate high scores must tackle most of the stages at least twice. This alone adds plenty of reason to go back and play the game over again, yet this is not to say that the game is short of levels because it certainly has plenty of them. All-in-all gamers get quite a bit out of this cartoony side-scroller that’s suited for the entire family. Putting aside the minor issue with the floaty-controls, gamers will find that Piggly: Christmas Edition might be a good addition to their gaming library.
