Bad Piggies

I found out Bad Piggies was available for the PC, so I purchased it.  It installed fine on my Windows VM.  The game kind of reminds me of The Incredible Machine, but with an actual goal.  In The Incredible Machine, like Amazing Alex, each board has a random goal.  You are just trying to perform the goal of the board.  In Bad Pigs, the goal is less random.  You are trying to get the pig to the finish point.  It is kind of a cross between Angry Birds and Amazing Alex.

I have played about 20 boards at this point.  I don't know how I feel about the 3 star system yet.  In Angry Birds, you got between one and three starts depending on how many points you got (which measures how good you were at the board).  The annoying thing in Angry Birds was the game didn't tell you how many points you needed to get the different stars.  So, you had a goal, but not how to get that goal.  In Bag Pigs, the goals are more concrete.  You have two optional tasks.  You get one start for each optional task you accomplish in a run that takes the pig across the finish line.  This solves the missing 'how' problem with Angry Birds but replaces it with a sense that you are no longer measuring skill.  Each optional task is a puzzle in its own right, while the Angry Birds point system allowed you to quantitatively measure your skill.

The boards are more puzzle-like than Angry Birds.  In Angry Birds, there were multiple ways to solve many of the boards.  In Bad Pigs, you really have to find the way the game designers intended you to solve the puzzle.  There is very little leeway.  I felt like I was more trying to head inside the designers heads and less trying to solve the puzzle.

Overall, I do enjoy the game, and I do recommend it for the people that enjoyed The Incredible Machine.  I find myself playing Angry Birds more, however.  I enjoy having the ability to play around with the physics to solve the problem in Angry Birds, instead of trying to solve the problem in the exact way the designers intended in Bad Pigs..