The Story

The iPhone faithful have Tiny Wings to sate their Orville-esque aviation whims. Over here on Android we don’t. What we do have are Tiny Wings clones like Dragon, Fly! and now Dillo Hills.

The Experience

We reviewed Dragon, Fly! a couple of weeks ago but our Youtube followers reckoned Dillo Hills was the Ting Wings clone du jour, so we thought we’d check it out.

Having parted with your 61p, Dillo Hills gives you the option to play as an Armadillo (hence the name), a squirrel, tortoise, or penguin. Each character boasts a few neat animations all of their own but there’s no discernible advantage of playing as one or the other.

The idea of the game is to get through as many zones as possible before your character’s happiness runs out. Happiness is gained by soaring like an eagle, and lost by clattering clumsily into the side of hills, or not following their gradient correctly. It’s a fine art but one that, if you get it right, will see you flying through zone after zone with your happiness bar (bottom right) full to the brim and high scores tumbling all around you.

Like Dragon, Fly!, the control method is simply a case of holding the touchscreen to build up speed when going downhill and releasing as you reach the trough of the valley in order to launch into the air. Do it right and you’ll be rewarded with big points and a nice big ‘perfect’ on-screen, do it wrong and your happiness will be zapped, leaving it perilously low. Dillo Hills adds one extra control element to the mix: the ability to glide. Touch the top of the screen while your character is mid-air and it will begin to glide as best it can, staying aloft for precious extra seconds and, potentially, getting you to a suitable point to launch from again rather than slamming into the scenery.

Dillo Hills lacks the challenges and back story of Dragon, Fly! but it does have one ace up its sleeve, and that’s the brilliant ‘ultra’ graphics mode which sharpens everything up on high-end handsets and makes Dillo Hills look and play like the Xbox 360 to Dragon, Fly!’s Sega Master system. There’s really no competition in terms of graphics and gameplay.

Unfortunately, without the aforementioned challenges and back story, Dillo Hills feels hollower than its counterpart, leaving you wanting more depth after playing for a few hours. Sure, vying to beat the global leaderboard is fun, but a few more local trials along the way wouldn’t hurt. So for that reason, we’re calling Dragon, Fly! vs Dillo Hills a tie!

Still, Dillo Hills is a beautiful-looking, highly playable Tiny Wings-alike and, should the original ever make it to Android, will no doubt give it a run for its money…

The Bottom Line

Great-looking, super-playable Tiny Wings clone, but could do with more of a challenge than just trying to score as big as possible.

Additional Info

Version reviewed 1.1.9
Requires Android 2.2 or higher

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