Monday, June 5, 2011: "Aporkalypse - Pigs of Doom"

Today's free app from the Appstore is titled "Aporkalypse - Pigs of Doom," and it is brought to us by "www.handy-games.com."

Amazon describes aporkalypse like this: "the world has a pig problem.  According to an old prophecy, the four Pigs of Doom should proclaim the end of the world in a distant future--but something went terribly wrong and the gates of Heaven and Hell have already opened.  Now it's up to the greedy Hunger Pig, the heavily armed War Pig, the controlling Pest Pig, and the ghostly Death Pig to stop this madness."

Now, that's a pretty "out there" description for a puzzle game involving pigs.  On to the review!

Aporkalypse is a top-down puzzle game, featuring the four "Pigs of Doom."  Each pig has their own special powers and abilities that help you solve the puzzles, in which the goal is to get all of the pigs to the end, and to collect as many coins as possible.

When you first load up the game, we're greeted with a welcoming start screen with five options: Start, Select Level, Help, More Games, and Facebook.  I won't go into detail of what the last three do, but if you click Start, it starts a new game, and if you click Select Level, you can choose to play any previously completed levels.

After selecting Start, a new game begins, with a conversation between an angel pig and a devil pig.  After some talking about the aporkalypse, you are brought into a level to play as Hunger Pig, who can carry enormous objects inside his mouth.

The controls are quite simple, with a Directional Pad for movement, and buttons along the side.  As I previously mentioned, each pig has its own abilities.  As Hunger Pig, when you approach a box, you are prompted to swallow it to carry it around.  The other pigs also have abilities that are quite useful to solving the puzzles.  War Pig, for example, can shoot cannonballs to destroy his enemies.

Overall, Aporkalypse - Pigs of Doom is a great puzzle game, with a great sense of humor.  The writing is done very well, the graphics are great, and the puzzles never stop being challenging.  If you have the bandwidth to spare, I definitely recommend that you give this one a download.  And if you like it enough, it's only $1.44 in the Android Market, so you could always support the developers by giving it a buy.

I give Aporkalypse - Pigs of Doom a 5 out of 5.