When Pigs Fly

By: Derek Yu

On: July 28th, 2009

When Pigs Fly is a new platformer from Anna Anthropy (Mighty Jill Off) and her first Flash title. It’s a fun, frustrating little game. I finished in 15.25 with 110 accidents, which is surprisingly less accidents than I have each day in real life!

Posted in Browser Games, Platformers | Tags: AuntiePixelante

poorwill

Record 11:33 time (112 Accidents, shhhh). EAT IT TIGSOURCE. EEEEEEAAAAAT IT.
poorwill

p.s. crotch chop
Derek

6.08 with 35 accidents, baby.
http://adamatomic.com Adam Atomic

1 – Bounding boxes too large
2 – Sidespike death is stupid
3 – Vicious bitch mean
4 – Couldn’t get past the ‘2’-shaped room covered with spikes and lava
5 – Sound effects are brain punishment (maybe apt!)

6 – Most addictive game I have played in a very long time, positive, loving memories of Poyo are flooding back to me
7 – Lovely music!!

World needs more of these, but this one could use a smidge more polish IMO
Camdog

12.24 with 128 accidents! AAAAH! The bounding box on the spikes was driving me nuts. The pig sound effects were also torture.

That being said, it was challenging and fun! I liked the level design and graphics, especially the neat two-color blocks. Thumbs up!
Malasdair

YOU FINISHED IN 8.48 WITH 87 ACCIDENTS

“Better Than Jill”!

This might be my favorite game yet from A. P.
Xion

1.00 with 5 accidents.

…

haha no 14.5 with 150.
pgil

11.41 with 103 accidents. Fun game with cute music, and I like the little graphical touches like the submarine. Sound effects were kind of annoying.
http://www.distractionware.com Terry

3.54 with 15 accidents!

This is excellent.
failrate

re: pig sound effects
from auntiepixelante.com
“the pigâ€™s squeals were provided by my own little piglet. (you can turn those off with the S key, by the way.)”

Maybe would have been best to explicitly state that in the game proper, but where would be an appropriate place given there’s no menu.

@Adam
re: Sidespike death is stupid
Actually, you can’t let your wings touch *anything*, which is fair and internally consistent.
Mousse

Another fun exercise is beating the game while making as few landings as possible.
http://blog.jamesgecko.com James

Squeak squeak squeeeeeeeeek!!! Squeal.

failrate, thank you for this valuable “s key” information.
Lega

5.23 with 27 accidents… not terrible for a first run! :D
http://wherecouldtom.be Tom Sennett

Man, screw this game. I’m a big fan of Anna’s writing but I’m finding this not fun at all.

I guess I’m one of those sissy “hold my hand” gamers Flash developers complain so much about. And I dislike playing the same screen over and over.

The title sequence was really well done, though.
http://adamatomic.com Adam Atomic

Oh forgot to mention that the instant reset/retry is super good and necessary! and yea, sidespike death is kind of weird, because it should be a wing death, but you get spike death, and the spike bounding box and your wing bounding box conflate the issue further

still fucking addictive tho
Manpon

I’m always happy to have a Pixelante game that doesn’t have a butch lesbian in a prominent role. It’s about time.
undertech

194 accidents. Only they weren’t accidents. They were FLASHES OF INCOMPETENCE.
Sparky

Ah, a Pixelante game! This game has lovely level design, as always. I like the mechanics in this one. I’m reminded in a good way of Flywrench because of the slightly drifty flying and instant respawns.

First try: 14:31 with 176 accidents. Talented? No. Persistent? Yes :)

Terry, that’s an amazing score.
Sparky

103 accidents, 11:54
Flamebait

8:48 with 76 accidents on my first try, and I *really* suck at platformers. Great fun- surprisingly I only got (mildly) frustrated on one of the screens. The only significant problem is the spike hitbox, as people have said. Bought it many times when no actual pixel intersection took place. Apart from that, I died once because the Flash player lurched, as it tends to do.

The pig’s movement feels very natural, or well-judged. Dunno why exactly but I was very impressed by that. AFAICT Anna doesn’t have any other flight-based games, and if she made others they would probably kick ass like this one.
cm

17:11 with 204 accidents. Fail?

Also, am I the only one who thought the collision boxes were actually pretty forgiving? There were quite a few places I thought I’d die but didn’t.
Daniel

REALLY fun game
Though I sucked it up.
But did beat it.
15.16 164 Accidents
Jonathan

16:13 with 229 accidents. I didn’t discover the ‘s’ key while I was playing and nearly threw my keyboard across the room. Turning the volume helped, of course, but it’s certainly reminiscent of the pre-analog controller era when joystick tapping and trying to do precision controls on a c64 by lightly tapping the joystick.
whom

Time:8.06
Accidents:45

I think I like it.
MISSSTTAAA SPAHKLEEE

Uncommonly tough for a flash game, but I liked it. I got the impression it would soon end once grass appeared, though the game stretched for a while after that.
bateleur

18:56 with 118 accidents.

Nice little game. Good to see the designer had the restraint to let it end without feeling the need to stick an impossible bit in there.

My only grumble is that I’d have liked the option to use up-arrow for “fly” since I’m incompetent with my left hand.
Derek

Yeah, some options for jump would have been nice! The spacebar always feels clunky to me.
http://0xdeadc0de.org Eclipse

very nice, a button to turn off the annoying audio would have helped, it was so annoying i cannot completed the game with the speakers on
http://0xdeadc0de.org Eclipse

oh S key, nice
Nikica

The game is really cool, 10.25 with 96 accidents.
http://0xdeadc0de.org Eclipse

actually you can use also Z to jump
Bleagle

And Shift…
People need to read the instructions ; )
GenericMeatUnit

11:25 with 89 at 8.25pm 29/7/9 with only flying. i’m okay with that.
Manpon

11:20 with 151 accidents. This game makes me want to go eat bacon out of pig-hate.
Synnah

“YOU FINISHED IN 9.25 WITH 84 ACCIDENTS”

Terry’s time is insane!
Derek

Oops! I totally did read the instructions… and blanked out afterward, I guess.

I hate the Omega Room. Those two little spikes at the top are just cruel. :'(
Bennett

Hahaha, Terry’s all hardcore now that he is writing his own hard platformers all the time.

And @Tom Sennett: Come of it, your games are even harder.
Will

YOU FINISHED IN 43.49 WITH 648 ACCIDENTS

I’m going to bed. Let us never speak of this again.
Jim

about 27 minutes with 215 deaths, terribly addictive and played this with my 7 year old brother. Good fun, I’ll recommend this to my friends.
Tet

Christ, so many “IT’S TOO HARD” babies on Newgrounds. Poor woman.
Ryan

Delicious game, the Omega stage gave me the most frustration.
SteGriff

15.08 with 128 accidents :D
Loved the game.
undertech

I wonder if there’s a code to replace the pig squeals with moans of ecstasy.
strong

to be fair, the mute button, s key, and alternate jump buttons were all mentioned in the instruction box.

you gotta read that! it’s important!
http://news.bigdownload.com James Murff

15 minutes the first time, 120 accidents

5 minutes the second time, 40 accidents

Woo babeh! It’s only hard the first time.
Bennett

I managed to do 18 screens on the one-life mode.
Kevin Gadd

Absolutely unsatisfying, which is odd since I’ve enjoyed most of her other games. I could go on about what’s wrong with the controls and the hitboxes and the physics but why bother.

Art is simplistic (perhaps too simplistic in places, like the spikes) but has a good consistent style and some nice color choices.

Music is pretty good until you get tired of it.

The addition of alternate gameplay modes at the end is probably a good decision but afterward I had absolutely no desire to play more.

Still, can’t really complain. Fairly high quality and a pretty clever gimmick, so rock on pixelante I guess.
Will

“If you quit in the middle of the game your place will be saved! Don’t worry.”

If I’d seen that last night I might have gone to bed a lot earlier! I’m not a huge fan of punishing difficulty but I enjoyed this for a while – I flagged a lot about halfway and the rest was a bit of a chore as a result. The first half-dozen screens at the beginning while the music was still building were a magical good time.

I think the problem is it doesn’t feel like my skill level was going up through the game – I was just hurling myself at obstacles until I managed to get past them, rather than making plans or re-using techniques.

I did learn to flutter – that was cool – but was mostly held back by old man reflexes.
Ape

Flash Game… :(
Tschep

Buhi buhi buhi buhi.