Bad Piggies are the new Angry Birds

There’s a new game from the makers of Angry Birds for David Cameron to try out. After completing every level of the computer game, which sees players destroy pigs by firing birds from slingshots, the Prime Minister must have been looking for another challenge to occupy him while Samantha Cameron rocks out to her favourite singer Azealia Banks.

Now Angry Birds' creators have launched a successor to the game that Cameron said was “addictive” and Justin Bieber loves simply because “it’s so sick”. Last Thursday, Rovio — the Finnish studio behind the game that has ruled the roost — released Bad Piggies, a spin-off starring the birds’ arch enemies: chubby green pigs. Birds took $106m (£65m) last year but “fans are clamouring for something new”, says Scott Steinberg, CEO and lead analyst at TechSavvy. “There’s a fatigue setting in for Angry Birds.”

This new game shows things from the pigs’ point of view. In a risky move, the makers have abandoned the “flick and hit” move that Salman Rushdie said he has “mastered” for a more complicated approach where users build their own flying, rolling or spinning device to help the porkers get revenge on the fowl. Unlike birds, pigs can’t fly, so they need equipment. There are 60 levels to work through and, like Birds, it costs 69p. There have been some doubts about whether Rovio can match the success of Angry Birds, which has its own theme park, and the gaming community have been mumbling about Bad Piggies being the equivalent of a difficult second album. Tetris was a hit in 1984 but Super Tetris didn’t catch on, Pac-Man had no sequel and Zynga’s Farmville fell from 83 million monthly users in 2010 to 18.7 million today.

But 258 people have already given Bad Piggies four-star reviews on the app store. People seem to enjoy watching pigs drive cars off cliffs and fly over piles of dynamite.