Tiny Wings

Price at time of writing 59p (approx $0.99)

Sometimes apps can surprise you.

Something so simple yet so ruddy addictive.

Many have argued it's an Angry Birds beater. It's fabulous but I don't think you can compare the two games, they are completely different kettles of fish ............or rather birds.

What a simple concept. A solitary bird, a hilly landscape - the aim is just to keep the bird in flight as long as possible between dawn and sunset.

At dawn your little feathered friend awakes but immediately the sun goes down it's game over because he falls asleep (If only I could nod off so easily!)

Control method? One single digit which you can place anywhere you like on the screen (although avoid top right as that's the pause button) Touching the screen results in the bird's wings closing and therefore speeding the bird up on his decent. To do well you need to do this to catch the downward slopes of hills, releasing your finger before you ascend up the next slope.

There are coins and "speedcoins" to be collected on your journey but concentrate too much on these rather than your quick journey and you will literally find time catches up with you as the sun quickly reaches the midday point then moving on to sunset. You need to concentrate and keep speedy to hop from one island to the next to stay one step ahead of time.

Open Feint enabled you can keep track of those leader board to see how your achievements compare with others around the world.

As if that's not all Tiny Wings has a couple of rather nice features which adds to its already addictive universal appeal.

Getting achievements adds to a score multiplier which is then retained so on the next game you keep that multiplication of your score.

Graphics are completely different from one game to the next, so never the same hills, never the same graphics, which are bright and colourful.

With a lovely gentle piece of very appropriate background music which never gets irritating Tiny Wings has that "Just One More Go appeal". It also seems to be very friendly on battery usage.

This would have been a fabulous app to be sponsored by Twitter, featuring the Twitter Bird. It would have been fantastic for the publisher, Andreas Illiger, and brilliant great publicity for Twitter. If it ever happens please remember where you read this suggestion first - I'll be looking for my cut Andreas :)

This is one of those Angry Birds like apps which is going to stay at the top of the charts for a long time and it should sell well in just about every countrry on the planet.

Well done Andreas Tiny Wings is a classic game to be enjoyed by young and old alike.

10/10 and available to download here