When it comes to iOS games, it just takes one glance at the App Store to instantly see successful games sitting right next to its seemingly endless army of clones. Now, I have nothing against cloning a game. As long as you aren’t aping the game completely, the game can come off as a compliment to how great the original idea was and maybe be able to even offer something new.
Tiny Toots is a slide and fly game from Tradewest Digital. If you have played Tiny Wings, the concept is very similar. You touch the screen when going downhill to slide faster and let go when going uphill. Instead of a bird trying to outrun the night, you get a lovable dinosaur named Houston that propels itself with the help of flatulence caused by his love for eating beans.
Everything is broken up into levels that Houston has to race to the end of to escape the evil doctor trying to capture him. Eating beans gives you a higher score the more you eat and there are red beans that temporarily give you a speed boost. The red beans also fill up a meter in the bottom left corner that when pressed, launches Houston sky high leaving what I hope is a trail of dust in his wake.
Yeah I know, it all sounds silly. That’s what makes Tiny Toots charming, if you can call farting charming (it’s Geekscape… we can). Besides all that, Tiny Toots is still, at its core, fun to play. Normally, I chastise games aping popular titles for the sheer intention of riding the coat tails of the other games success. With Tiny Toots though, it straddles the fence of being different enough that I can forgive it and enjoy a farting dinosaur gliding up and down hills. Plus, Droid users still can’t download Tiny Wings for themselves, so until they can, why not fake it until they make it?
Editor’s note: Jonathan religiously plays Dillo Hills, yet another successful Tiny Wings clone. But he’s always fakin’ it anyways.