Allow me to introduce you to the game that caused you to not get any work done today.

Pig Up! is the latest addictive creation of PopCap Games, the creator of casual hits like Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies that just got acquired by megapublisher Electronic Arts for three quarters of a billion dollars. It’s a Facebook game that uses your social graph, but at its core it’s just a compelling action game that would work well on any platform.

You: a pig that’s been shot out of a cannon. Them: bees. Flap your makeshift wooden wings to get more height, but your flaps are limited. You can gain more flaps by picking up the “flapples,” tantalizing green fruit that flies toward you. Pig Up (I really, really hope the name is a a Simpsons allusion) is thus a delicate balance between going after the flapples and avoiding the bees, which take away lots of flaps if you collide with them.

It is horribly addictive. I got up at 7 a.m. thanks to the garbage truck, started playing Pig Up and I have done almost nothing since. I forgot to even drink the rest of my coffee. I never forget to drink my coffee. I literally told myself 10 times in a row that okay, this was my last game for real.

As with most Facebook games, it is paramount to have friends play along with you. The game builds a list of all your Facebook friends who are playing Pig Up, and whenever you pass their most recent high score, a special flapple is deployed that gives you thousands of points and three extra flaps. These are a godsend. Without them, it’s difficult to proceed. You start to wish your friends would get a little better at the game so their special flapples would come a little later, when you really need them.

The other Facebook hook, the way PopCap is hoping to make money off us suckers, are power-ups. As you play more games of Pig Up you can unlock more powers. One shoots you higher up into the sky (flying higher nets you more points). Another lets you bounce higher when you eventually do hit the ground, giving you some chance to squeak out some more last-minute points and maybe, just maybe, get back in the air.

These cost “Pig Pence” to use each time you play. You gain an ample amount of Pig Pence for every game, but not quite enough to use the big power-ups constantly. You can suck it up and play without them for a while, or you can fork over some actual human dollars in exchange for pig money.

PopCap has been careful to note that Pig Up is a “preview” version and that it will make lots of changes to the final product. God help us all if PopCap somehow finds a way to make it more addictive.