Gimmie A Piggy

Candy Crush is excruciatingly addictive. This is blindingly obvious to those of us who play it but it is always amusing to observe the doubtful look crossing the face of somebody who's never set eyes upon it. 'Takes over your life does it?' they judge, as a player tries to find the words to express the dazzling allure of those brightly coloured sweets, the endless toil of making it to the next level and the numbing sensation as real life becomes a distant memory and Aunt Jean's birthday card lies half-written on the coffee table.

At a time when banks, restaurants and other tangible businesses are facing economic instability, this game's developers, King, have built a company currently worth around £2.6billion. The result has created an abundance of games designed to keep us glued to our phones. Independent app developers have never had a better chance to shine.

The latest star to burst onto the scene is London based web developer Matt Jewell. He's been hard at work creating apps for the likes of Volvo, Coca Cola and Virgin Media for more than three years but his latest creation, Piggy Break, is a real teeth-grinder.

Like most of the successful games to have emerged over the last two years, this one shares two main attributes. Firstly, it is incredibly simple, so much as to be reminiscent of Flappy Bird, whose creator, Dong Nguyen tried to make his game as simplistic as possible, telling Rolling Stone it was designed for commuters with 'one hand holding the train strap'. Secondly, most developers know the easiest way to keep us playing is not to give us a natural place to stop.


Those piggies are definitely hypnotic. Though Dr Danial Noble predicted in 1854 that the swinging effect of a pendulum would have 'wider applications', could he ever have imagined virtual china pigs swerving around chainsaws?

Personally, I've had to take drastic measures, just as I did with Candy Crush, to stop this game taking over my life. Yes, I've deleted the app (with a measly best score of 27) but I hope Matt's success continues. As far as I know, the world record so far belongs to Mike from Tamworth with 89. Let me know if you can do better.