Birdie In Trouble, a fun new puzzler from Klik! Games, is now available from the app store. With charming graphics, smooth gameplay, simple controls, and increasingly devious puzzle design, Birdie In Trouble has us chirping for more.
Birdie In Trouble Pros:
- Great Graphics
- Challenging Puzzles
- Simple Controls
Birdie In Trouble Cons:
- OpenFeint Underutilized
- Lack of Complete Movement Instructions
Playing as a cute little yellow bird, you must get make your way to your nest by jumping on, and removing, each leaf on the tree. Each time you jump off of a leaf, it disappears. The puzzling aspect requires you to determine an appropriate path that will leave you in a position to jump to your nest when all is said and done. As you progress through the game, you will encounter several special types of leaves. Many leaves contain arrows that will cause you to jump automatically in the arrow’s direction upon landing on the leaf. This often sparks a chain reaction of jumps that clears several leaves from the board, though it just as easily can leave you too far away from your nest to return. Other special leaves can remove all diagonal leaves, remove (or reopen) all leaves in a row, or require you to clear certain leaves in a specific order. If you reach your nest before clearing all of the leaves, or after clearing leaves in an improper order, you will fail the level. Falling out of the tree will also restart the board.
There are specific, valid ways to jump around the board, though the devs did not include these instructions in the tutorial. It appears that the birdie can jump one or two spaces to the left, right, or in any diagonal direction. He can also jump down one level at a time, but cannot jump straight up at all. One of the keys to solving puzzles is realizing that you can jump to a space that does not have a leaf, provided that there is a leaf somewhere below to catch you as you fall. Controls are all touch-based. If you try to make an invalid jump, nothing will happen. Tapping a valid space will cause an arrow to materialize and the birdie will follow suit. There are 75 levels in all. The first few levels were extremely basic and had us worried that this game might be geared toward very young children. Those fears were quickly dispelled as we saw how complex and difficult some levels were to solve. You are timed as to how quickly you can solve each puzzle, and points are earned for swift solutions. There are multiple methods to solving most puzzles.
Graphically, the game has a crisp, cartoonish look, featuring fun animations, especially when the bird falls from a height. The soundtrack included a few upbeat tracks, as well as some cutesy sound effects that were fitting for this type of game. While the audio may get tiresome to listen to after a while, we didn’t find it all that annoying. An option to play our own music would be nice, though. OpenFeint is utilized for leaderboards and achievements. Sadly, the leaderboard only shows your cumulative score, and the achievement system contains only five items, which are all tied to the number of levels completed. The only other negative aspect we found in the game was the annoyance of seeing an OpenFeint banner indicating our “New High Score” after each and every level. Otherwise, there was little to dislike about the game. Our fear is that we’ll simply complete the game too quickly and crave more levels. A level editor would be an outstanding inclusion in a future update that would keep gameplay fresh for a long time. Despite this, replay value should be good. Birdie In Trouble is currently on sale for $0.99, an unbeatable price for this 5-Dimple delight.
