Tiny Wings HD Review – This un-tiny version of a beloved game soars with sheer delight

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By: Andreas Illiger

Version #: 2.0.1

Date Released: 2012-07-30

Developer: Andreas Illiger

Price: 2.99

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At long last, an iPad version of Tiny Wings has been released. Since its launch in February last year, the immensely popular iOS bird game that doesn’t have Angry Birds in its title has been compatible with iPhone and iPod touch only. Until a couple of weeks ago, that is.

A couple of weeks ago, Tiny Wings developer Andreas Illiger debuted the much-anticipated version 2.0 of his best-selling game. Along with Tiny Wings 2.0 for iPhone, the long-overdue iPad version of the game was also released. But rather than making the original game universal in order to support the iPad, Illiger opted to release the iPad-only Tiny Wings HD.

Tiny Wings HD is basically a scaled up reproduction of Tiny Wings 2.0 … and then some.

To start with, Tiny Wings HD for iPad, like Tiny Wings 2.0 for iPhone, features a new game mode called Flight School, with the original mode now referred to as Day Trip. In Flight School, you play as any one of four tiny birds on a race toward the finish line of each of the mode’s various islands. As it happens, at the finish line is their mother, waiting to regurgitate their food upon their arrival, with the first one getting the biggest fish and the last one getting a mere worm. Poor guy. Don’t let that guy be your bird, all right?

Also common between the two new Tiny Wings versions are Retina graphics (Finally! And yes, they look gorgeous on the third-generation iPad.) and iCloud support for syncing games between devices.

What’s unique to Tiny Wings HD is the iPad-only two-player mode called Hill Party. Hill Party offers real-time hill-hopping matches by splitting the iPad’s display into two playing screens, one for each player. There are two sub-modes in Hill Party: Island King and Five-Course Meal. In the former sub-mode, the player who earns 10,000 points on an island wins the match, while in the latter, the player who earns the highest score after flying across five islands triumphs. Both sub-modes support manual or automatic handicap (take-off delay) for players who are particularly good at making birds with tiny wings fly.

Of course, Tiny Wings HD features the same flight mechanic, the same scoring system, the same (but now Retina-optimized) watercolor graphics, and the same buoyant music we’ve come to know and love in the original Tiny Wings. The main difference is that we don’t have to play Tiny Wings for iPhone at 2x magnification on the iPad. Now, we have the real, high-flying deal: Tiny Wings HD for the iPad’s un-tiny screen.