Fowlplay is an endurance target shooting game that puts you in the role of an incontinent and vengeful little pigeon. Believe it or not, your mission is to poop on as many of the unsuspecting people below as possible. Consistently hitting your marks without missing will earn you huge combos. However, you need to keep an eye to the sky as well to avoid oncoming trees otherwise its three strikes and your out.
Controlling your stool obsessed pigeon is simple. You will automatically be propelled forward, so just tilt the device left and right to steer the bird and avoid the oncoming trees. Tap the screen to drop your..err….droppings. The longer you last, the faster the game will get, requiring you to take your increased momentum into consideration when timing the drop, and oncoming trees will require quicker reflexes to avoid. Personally, I found the ramp up to be a bit slow, perhaps a second difficulty mode could be added where the game speeds up a bit sooner?
Just to keep things interesting, Fowlplay has three power-ups, each of which gives your pigeon a temporary special ‘ability’. Tacos will give your bird ‘the runs’, a diarrhea-like triple shot, making it easier to hit the people below. Hot Sauce, will set your payload (and target) ablaze, doubling your points. Finally, Football Helmets allow you to blast right through any trees that get in your way.
Fowlplay also has OpenFeint integration which allows for global leaderboards and 9 achievements. The game is quite visually appealing with the nicely rendered 3D graphics which reminded me a little of MiniGore. There is a catchy little upbeat retro musical score with an odd but complementary mix of instruments and crazy sounds from wind instruments to synthesizers to steel drums, basically everything but the kitchen sink (well maybe that’s in there too). In fact on a few occasions I’ve actually switched over to the game just to listen while doing other things. It fits perfectly with the light-hearted, whimsical nature of the game (you can hear a taste of it in the trailer below). And YES, I am happy to report that there is a very satisfying “splat!” when the poop hits the pedestrian.
That being said, I did find Fowlplay to be a bit lacking in terms of overall variety. While the trees’ locations and sizes are random, I felt like I was in a never-ending park. I really wanted to see a change in scenery as the game progressed so I felt like I was getting somewhere. What would be really nice is if the Happynin Games would add a few more locales into the mix. Perhaps your pidgeon could fly out of the park and then over a highway where you’d need to avoid big trucks while doing your business on commuters’ windshields. Maybe you could fly over an ocean, avoiding sailboats and para-sailors while bombing poor jets skiers or boaters. Just some thoughts. The only other change I’d suggest, is to move the pause button to the top of the screen as I kept pressing it by mistake while playing.
In Conclusion
Let’s face it, sometimes you just need a little bit of Sophomoric humor to take your mind off of things. Fowlplay is a fun and somewhat addicting distraction. I think the game would probably fare better at a 99¢ price-point given the fact that the lack of variety in gameplay could limit its longevity, but the developer has promised that more updates are on the way. While the subject matter may not be for everyone, I’d recommend at least giving into that guilty curiosity and trying out the free Lite version.
Screenshots
