Games: Bad Piggies, but rather good sales

Rovio's latest offering, Bad Piggies, is a spin-off from Angry Birds

No smartphone game has proven quite as popular, addictive and enduring as Angry Birds, by the previously little-known Finnish games studio Rovio.

The game – which asks players to fire the titular furious fowl at structures constructed by evil green pigs – was launched in 2009, since when it has been downloaded more than a billion times and spawned merchandise, a theme park and a proposed movie spin-off.

On 27 September, Rovio followed its string of Angry Birds variants with Bad Piggies, an all-new game starring the aforementioned green pigs. To pass each level, players must put together a vehicular contraption with the available parts – propellers, balloons, umbrellas, explosives – which can somehow carry the pigs over a series of rocks and chasms to collect the necessary points.

Angry Birds took at least a day to reach number one in the US iTunes App Store; Bad Piggies, by contrast, took a little over three hours.