Tiny Wings: Tips & Tricks
Tiny Wings is an iOS game for the iPhone and iPod touch by programmer and artist Andreas Illiger. When it was released in February of 2011, it immediately earned praise as one of the most fun and addictive games to ever hit the App Store. Being a developer of iOS games myself, I’m always skeptical about such claims, but after having spent some quality time with Tiny Wings over the past few weeks, I have to say I agree.
The game is not without some level of frustration which is made worse by the fact that there is but a single interaction method – Touch the screen or don’t. Given such simple controls you’d think the game would be easy to master. Not so. The player slides over hills and vales and either taps to increase their decent or lets up to slow their decent to the ground. Where they land on a slope depends on how well they slide up the next hill and back into the air once again. Tiny Wings is a “height climber” style game ala Doodle Jump where the player tries to get as far as they can in a single session. When the game ends, the player must return all the way to the beginning and start over. The great thing about Tiny Wings is that it’s so engaging and addictive you really don’t mind starting over each time.
By far the greatest challenge in Tiny Wings is mastering the art of sliding. In order to succeed in the game, you’ll need to practice and become really good at hitting just the proper point on hills in order to achieve maximum momentum. Learning this skill can be tricky and when I first started playing I was so frustrated I was minutes away from deleting the game. Trust me when I say stick with it because once you figure out how to slide properly, the entire game’s fun quotient gets amped up by a factor of x1000.
Each hill has a small landing window on the backside that you can hit which results in a perfect slide. This keeps your momentum going and if you stack three perfect slides in a row, you’ll enter fever mode where every point you earn is doubled. Mastering perfect slides is key to climbing the leader boards in Tiny Wings. The more perfect slides you make in a game, the faster you’ll go, the more likely you’ll be to touch the clouds (bonus points) and the longer you’ll be in fever mode. All of these factors add up and when combined with coin collection, result in a higher final score.
In addition to mastering perfect slides, there are a few tips and tricks I’ve learned that may help you get further and score higher in Tiny Wings. As with anything, your milage may vary but as School House Rock taught me, knowledge is power, so here you go:
Nest Up – Take time early on and knock off some of the game’s achievements in order to “Nest Up” to the next level. Every time you increase your nest level you increase your score multiplier. For the first upgrade, you will need to perform 7 Perfect Slides, gather 100 coins in total across all games, and reach the fourth island in at least one game.
Touch the Sky – Try and touch the sky as often as you can because doing so earns you 20 points times your multiplier. Each touch represents an ever-increasing award of bonus points towards your final tally.
Reset Button – If you don’t leave the first island in fever mode, start over. In fact, if I’m not in fever mode one half way through the first island I usually kill my game and begin again. Since you’re so close to the start you don’t lose a lot of time for trying this technique. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.
Play on an iPad – If you own an iPad I urge you to play on it instead of the iPhone. As of this writing, the game isn’t universal but it doesn’t matter. The iPad’s large, roomy screen makes seeing the oncoming terrain much easier and gives you plenty of space to place your finger that’s out of the way.
The main thing to remember when playing Tiny Wings is to try and stay calm and remain focused. If you miss a slide and start to lose momentum don’t panic just keep at it and get back into the groove as quickly as you can. If you spot a speed coin, gobble it up to quickly get air back under your wings and get going again.
All in all, Tiny Wings is a masterful creation that is sure to give you hours of entertainment and enjoyment. I have to hand it to Illiger because there aren’t many iPhone games that hang around on my home screen for more than a few days. Tiny Wings has joined Parachute Panic, Orba, Plants vs Zombies, Hot Plates and Carcassonne as one of my all-time favorite iOS games. Have fun and fly far my tiny-winged friends!
This is a YouTube video worth watching if you want to improve your technique. It’s also the video that spawned the recent bug fix which caused a crash between the seemingly impossible islands 9 &10.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGiLH1BjRqA&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Note that he uses a quick multi-tap in order to slow his forward momentum just enough to land with more control without losing fever mode. The first time I tried this technique, I got the furthest ever all the way to the exit ramp of island 7!
Another tip: Diving rather than gliding from altitude can really boost your speed going into the next slide. This is helpful if you miss a slide and need to regain some momentum. Basically, try not to flap your wings while descending, try to touch and hold as soon as you can after you start descending for as long as you can.
Tiny Wings won’t double my points when I’m in fever mode on my iPhone 3. I used an iPhone 4 and it worked great. I’ve done the updates. Any ideas as to why this is happening?
Tami, TW’s working fine on my 3GS. Tried restarting the phone recently? You may also want to kill TW from the multi-task tray to restart it from scratch. That helps me when I get audio glitches.
Another tip: if you’re having trouble hitting objectives, wait until another day. Not only do the backgrounds change, but also the placement and frequency of coins and speed coins. Finally got a BUNCH of speed coins on Island 1 and hit my objective.
Lastly, there is some sort of bug in TW with fever mode; it says I got a fever mode for 533.3 seconds, which, I assure you, is impossible. But I guess that’s in my high scores now. 😉 kinda makes up for them all being reset to 0 when he added the stats to begin with.
Thanks, Rock, but I already tried all of your suggestions. If no one else out there has any ideas, I may be headed to the AT&T store. The game ends up being no fun since you can’t generate as many points since you’re not doubling during fever mode. Oh well……
Another couple of tips:
1. You can get a Great Slide on the very 1st valley after the nest if you time it right. Let your bird flap his wings a few times first, THEN plummet. When you get the timing, you can get your first Great Slide straight out of the nest AND have enough momentum to get another GS immediately. This is your fastest, easiest way to get into Fever Mode. Nail your drops and jumps, and you can get some Cloudtouches and stat in Fever Mode for all if Island 1, helping you get the achievements. Remember: Island 1 is your best opportunity for racking up points, jumps, touches and coins, because you absolutely MUST always start this island from a dead stop.
2. Don’t bother trying to hit the 1st valley on any island after 1; they’re all impossible. You always reach the same midair velocity between islands and even if you are holding down your wings the whole time, the game won’t let you start your descent until AFTER the first valley.
I can’t get the Nest achievement on nest 7 where you have to get ten GS on the first island I van get 8 or 9 but never ten. If you have any ideas pls help be.
Tomato, this is also the problem I’m having in trying to achieve Nest 7. Does anyone have any tips?
Tomato and Faye: I found that by going as slow as possible and try to quickly double or triple tap in the air, as opposed to a long hold down on descent. This caused me not to jump as far or high.
I think that tiny wings is a great game on your ipod or iphone.One think I dislike is that you can`t play your friends online in a battle to see who gets the furthest.
I also think that there should be levels e.g ten stages per level and unlimited levels!
there should also be different places you go e.g country, space,desert etc.there should also be a world wide stats to see who has the highest scores and who has the lowest scores and where you a ranked in the world.
OVERALL I THINK TINY WINGS IS A GREAT GAME:)
I am trying to get nest 11, and I have to do 20 cloud touches NOT in fever mode. I just cannot do it! Please help me?! Ha 🙁
Speedy Birds Vs. Tiny Wings and Angry Birds
Insanely addictive
On level 8 u have to get up to level 4 with no GS and it’s so frustrating and hard anyone have anything to help me cause all of the things that I’ve heard to do doesn’t work HELP ME