Andreas Illiger

Andreas Illiger is a German self-taught game developer best known as the solo creator of Tiny Wings, the 2011 iPhone game about a little bird whose wings are too small to fly. Born in 1982 and from Kiel, Germany, he designed, programmed, drew and scored the game himself.

Before Tiny Wings, Illiger made Microsia, an audio-visual music program for Windows released in 2009. He then spent about seven months building Tiny Wings around a single mechanic: tap and hold to make the bird drop so it slides down hills and launches off the next slope. He has said he wanted a positive game about the dream of flying, simple enough for a toddler to grasp, and credited Nathan McCoy's Wavespark as an inspiration for the core idea. The hills, colours and islands are generated procedurally, so the world looks different every day.

Tiny Wings launched on February 18, 2011 and became the top-grossing game on the App Store for two weeks in late February and early March. Apple's Scott Forstall showed it on stage at WWDC 2011, it was voted best iPhone game of the year for 2011, and the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated it for Casual Game of the Year. Game Center statistics cited by Wikipedia put sales at about 10.5 million copies on iPhone and 1.8 million on iPad.

Rather than ship a paid sequel, Illiger released Tiny Wings 2 in 2012 as a free update with new levels and modes, alongside a separate Tiny Wings HD for iPad. An Apple TV edition followed in 2016, and an Apple Arcade version, Tiny Wings+, arrived in 2021.

Illiger keeps an unusually low profile and has never chased a follow-up hit, which makes Tiny Wings a classic example of one person, one mechanic and one perfectly tuned feel turning into a global mobile phenomenon.