The aim of Flying Pigs is to catch the pigs as they parachute down your screen. In order to catch each one, you need to line up your pig-catcher underneath it using the left and right arrow keys.
You have three lives at the start of each game. You will lose a life if you fail to catch a healthy pig, or if you catch a ‘death pig’ (see below). Your game ends when you lose all your lives (or catch an exploding pig).
You may encounter the following different pigs during your game:
Ordinary pigs that are worth 1, 2, 5 or 10 points each, depending on the number that they show.
Super bonus pigs that are worth 25 points each.
Diseased pigs that are contagious, and will spread their disease if you touch one.
Death pigs that you must avoid catching, otherwise you will lose a life.
‘Invisible’ pigs that only show up as a faint pair of eyes; each one is worth 3 points.
Space pigs that are worth 7 points if you catch them, but can rocket away safely if you don’t.
Terror pigs that come strapped to a bomb, which will blow up if you catch them, ending your entire game!
There are ten different levels in the game, each one faster than the previous one. You move up a level whenever you earn a certain number of points. Some types of pig only appear at higher levels. If you find the first few levels too easy, you can change the ‘Starting Level’ setting (on the ‘Options’ menu) so that the game begins at a higher level. If you find the game too hard, however, you can turn on ‘Granny Mode’ (also on the ‘Options menu’), which slows everything down.
If you are at work and your boss doesn’t approve of you playing games, you can set up a ‘boss key’, which you can press to quickly minimise the game when the boss walks into the room!
You can pause the game at any time by pressing F3, or selecting ‘Pause’ from the ‘Game’ menu. The game will pause automatically if you minimize it, or switch focus away to another application.
About the game
Flying Pigs started out as a birthday present for my mother – who is the daughter of a Suffolk pig farmer and has always liked pigs – back in November 1994. The original version was extremely crude and simple (even worse than this one!), partly because it ran under MS-DOS and partly because I was eleven at the time I wrote it!
In March 1996, the pigs and their parachutes moved to Windows, in something similar to their present form. I wrote and released one version of Flying Pigs for Windows, and later began work on a second version, but lost interest before completing it.
For seven years, the pigs languished somewhere in the depths of my hard disk, while I grew up (a bit!), moved from England to Scotland, left school, travelled around the world, and began university. During a wet weekend a week before my twentieth birthday, I rediscovered Flying Pigs, and decided that it was about time I finished the new version. I also needed to upgrade the program so that users of newer versions of Windows could benefit from the pleasure of watching crudely-drawn farm animals parachute down their screen.
Flying Pigs is freeware – do whatever you like with it. Enjoy!
Another thing that really makes Flying Pigs v2.0.0 enjoyable for me is how it manages to stay interesting even after playing it multiple times. Many games feel repetitive after a while, but here, the experience still feels fresh because of the small details and different ways you can approach the gameplay. As you continue playing, you naturally start improving and understanding the mechanics better, which makes everything feel more rewarding. I also appreciate the balance the game maintains—it’s not too difficult, but it’s not too easy either. You can play it casually for a short break or spend longer sessions without getting bored. That flexibility is one of the biggest reasons why I keep coming back to Flying Pigs v2.0.0. Overall, it’s the kind of game that doesn’t just entertain you for a moment, but actually gives you a consistently enjoyable experience every time you play.
