Rovio

Rovio fans worried that their favorite mobile gaming company had jumped the shark with Amazing Alex can rest easy: The maker of Angry Birds can still design fun and exciting puzzle games. Before we get into Bad Piggies, though, let’s recall the major reason why Amazing Alex failed: It was absolutely pointless. Unlike Angry Birds, whose goal is to help a flock of cantankerous-but-lovable birds recover their beloved stolen eggs from smarmy green pigs, Amazing Alex revolved around helping a bored kid come up with new ways to put a soccer ball into his laundry basket. Bad Piggies rectifies this right away by giving you an explicit, understandable motivation: The pigs are hungry, they want to eat a damn omelette, and it’s your job to help them. More →

Finnish game designer Rovio is going back to what it does best: Designing games with silly cartoon animals crashing into things. Rovio on Thursday officially released Bad Piggies, the latest spin-off in its mega-hit Angry Birds franchise, on both the Apple (AAPL) App Store and Google (GOOG) Play. Bad Piggies is a new action-puzzle game that lets users play as the villainous green pigs from the Angry Birds universe and involves building wacky vehicles to help the guide the pigs through a number of treacherous obstacle courses. BGR will have a mini-review of the game posted later on Thursday.

UPDATE: Bad Piggies has already hit the top spot in the iTunes App Store less than three hours after its official release.

Let’s face it: Rovio’s last big game, Amazing Alex, was a fairly lackluster affair. But happily, it looks as though Rovio is going back to doing what it does best with Bad Piggies, its new action-puzzle game that revolves around the villainous green pigs from the Angry Birds universe. Yahoo’s PluggedIn gaming blog on Monday posted a new Bad Piggies gameplay trailer showing how the game will revolve around designing wacky vehicles for the pigs to drive around that are reminiscent of the goofy contraptions that Wile E. Coyote used to buy from ACME, Inc. The full trailer for the game is posted below and from the looks of things, this game is shaping up to be much more exciting than Amazing Alex. More →