Critical Play: Physics Games

For this week’s critical play, I decided to explore Angry Birds and Cut the Rope, both are physics-based puzzle games. By physics-based, objects in both games interact with each other in ways that are identical or best simulate real-life physics.

In Angry Birds, the player must launch different kinds of birds via a slingshot to annihilate pigs behind defenses. Each time, the player must work out the right trajectory by pulling the slingshot to the right extent while pointing at the right angle. Different kinds of birds also come with different properties. Some birds would split into several small ones mid-air and some can pierce deeper into the defenses.

In Cut the Rope, the player needs to deliver the candy to the hungry monster by cutting different ropes tied to the candy and in the right sequence, since each rope can trigger different mechanisms depending on where the candy falls to. Similar to Angry Birds, the candy and the ropes also interact with the world in a way that resembles reality.

Real-world physics is the logical backbone of both game’s puzzles, making them easy to pick up and fun. Players can dive straight into the game without learning about how the world works from the ground up. While playing, players can have the confidence to predict what will happen for every move consistently. For both games, most of the fun comes in solving the challenging puzzles, and physics is one way to create a learning curve that is intuitive for most players but offers enough room for challenge while keeping everything reasonable.