Dillo Hills
June 15, 2011
Dillo Hills is a casual platforming game for Flash and Android. Inspired by the wildly popular iOS game Tiny Wings, it stars a tiny armadillo who wishes to fly through the air like a bird. To accomplish this, he must gain momentum by rolling down hills and launching into the air on the following incline, bobbing up and down along an endless landscape of hills.
As in Tiny Wings, the player makes the character roll downwards by pressing on the game screen, either with the cursor in the Flash desktop version or with a finger on an Android phone. However, unlike Tiny Wings, only pressing on the bottom half of the screen makes the armadillo sink; pressing on the top half causes the character to glide gently along, gradually decreasing in speed. This makes adjusting for unexpected hill formations much easier than in Tiny Wings.
Tiny Wings features glowing orbs that increase speed and coins that contribute to the overall score; in Dillo Hills these have been folded into a single item, diamonds that increase both score and speed. This is an elegant design that better integrates the score into the game.
One significant difference between Dillo Hills and Tiny Wings is the structure of a single game. A game of Tiny Wings takes place over a slightly variable span of time visualized as a single day; Dillo Hills features a “Happiness Meter” that increases when gathering velocity and otherwise playing well, and depletes if the player character smacks into an incline. The game ends when the Happiness Meter is empty. This makes Dillo Hills more suited to longer sessions. Though the feel of the game is very similar to Tiny Wings, it seems more forgiving.
Probably owing to the large number of graphical elements in the background, the Flash version runs at a spotty 30fps on a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU with an NVIDIA GeForce 320M integrated graphics card. The mobile version requires Android 2.2 or higher, and is reported by users to run well on a Samsung Galaxy S2 but lag on a Droid X or HTC Desire.
Dillo Hills is a good substitute for people who are curious about Tiny Wings but don’t own an iOS device. It’s also an interesting change of pace for experienced Tiny Wings players and fans of other simple yet deep platforming games.
Für deutschsprachiges Publikum gibt’s hier Dillo Hills. Viel Spaß mit dem Spiel!
Filed under: Action Games