Angry Birds (video game)
Angry Birds is a 2009 puzzle video game developed by Rovio Entertainment and published by Chillingo. Utilising touchscreen interaction, it revolves around players using a slingshot to launch limbless birds at green pigs stationed in various structures, with the intent of defeating all of the pigs on the playing field. As players advance through the game, new types of birds become available, some with unique abilities.
Rovio had developed over 50 games prior to Angry Birds. The game was conceived as a result of the development studio nearing bankruptcy; the concept was primarily inspired by sketch of stylized wingless birds illustrated by designer Jaakko Iisalo, and its gameplay is based on Crush the Castle, another 2009 puzzle game.
Angry Birds was originally released for mobile devices on December 11, 2009, with several ports and patch updates having been produced thereafter. It has received critical acclaim and is considered one of the best video games of all time. It was a commercial success, being downloaded over 50 million times as of 2010 and appearing on several app store top charts for long periods of time, and has won multiple awards. The success of Angry Birds spawned a media franchise, including numerous television series, print media, amusement parks, and feature films. Its first spinoff, Bad Piggies, was released in 2012. A sequel, Angry Birds 2, followed in 2015.
In early 2019, the game was discontinued alongside many of its early successors. In response, a remake titled Rovio Classics: Angry Birds was released on March 31, 2022, but was discontinued on February 23, 2023.
Gameplay
Angry Birds is a physics-based casual puzzle video game. The player controls a flock of flightless birds on a mission to save their eggs after they were stolen by a large number of green pigs. In each stage of the gameplay, the pigs are sheltered by structures made of various materials such as wood, glass, and stone resembling children's toy building blocks. Pigs are located inside the structures. Using a big slingshot, the player's objective is to launch a finite amount of birds with the goal of collapsing structures to eliminate pigs. Also hidden in the levels, players can unlock bonus levels by collecting golden eggs.There are several different types of birds used in the game, each distinguished by their color and shape. In the first levels, only the basic desert cardinal—whose name is Red—is available. As the player advances through the game additional types of birds become available. Some birds are effective against particular materials, and some have special abilities that may be activated by the player during the bird's flight; Chuck can rapidly speed up, Bomb can explode, the Blues can fragment into three with the help of his identical siblings, Matilda can drop an explosive egg-shaped projectile, Stella can trap objects with bubbles, Hal can open his beak to boomerang back, Terence functions similarly to Red but deals much more damage than his smaller counterpart, and Bubbles can expand and inflate. The pigs also vary, with hardiness relative to their size. Small pigs are weaker and are easily vanquished by direct hits or by debris from the damaged structures, while larger pigs are able to withstand more damage before succumbing to defeat. In addition, some pigs wear headgear or armour, making them even more resistant to damage.
Each level starts with the quantity, types, and firing order of birds predetermined. If all of the birds run out and the pigs are not defeated or are still shown on-screen, the level is failed and must be repeated, but if all of the pigs are eliminated after the last bird is launched, the level is instead cleared and the next level is unlocked. Points are scored for each pig defeated as well as for damage to, or destruction of, structures, and hefty bonus points are awarded for any unused birds; each unused bird grants 10,000 points. Upon completing each level, players can receive up to three stars depending on the score received. Players are encouraged to repeat any previously beaten levels in which all three stars were not awarded at first in order to fully master them and earn the full three star score.
Development
In early 2009, Rovio was in a state of bankruptcy; the staff began viewing proposals for potential games. One such proposal came from senior game designer Jaakko Iisalo in the form of a simulated screenshot featuring some angry-looking birds with no visible legs or wings. While the picture gave no clue as to what type of game was being played, the staff liked the characters, and the team elected to design a game around them. In early 2009, physics games, such as Crush the Castle, inspired the Rovio team. During the development of Angry Birds, the staff realized the birds needed an enemy. At the time, the "swine flu" epidemic was in the news, thus it is commonly believed that the staff made the birds' enemies pigs because of this. This has since been disputed, with Iisalo claiming that the pigs were inspired by drawings he had made at the age of 10.Angry Birds was the studio's 52nd produced game. On its initial release, the game did not receive many downloads. After Angry Birds was a featured app on the UK App Store in February 2010 and quickly reached No. 1 there, it reached the same spot on the paid apps chart in the US App Store in the middle of 2010, staying in that milestone for 275 days. The initial cost to develop Angry Birds was estimated to exceed €100,000, not including costs for the subsequent updates. In terms of publishing for the iOS version, Rovio partnered with distributor Chillingo to publish the game to the App Store.
Chillingo claimed to have participated in final game polishing, such as adding visible trajectory lines, pinch to zoom, pigs' grunts, birds somersaulting upon landing.
When Rovio began writing new versions of the game for other devices, new issues came to light. As the team began working on a version for Android systems, they observed a large number of configurations of device types and versions of the Android software. The number of combinations of software version, processor speed and even user interfaces was significantly larger than that for the iOS version. Ultimately, the team settled on a minimum set of requirements, even though that left nearly 30 types of Android phones unable to run the game, including some newly released phones. It was released on October 15, 2010. One month after the initial release on Android, Rovio began designing a lite version of the game for these other devices.
In early 2010, Rovio began developing a version of Angry Birds for Facebook. The project became one of the company's largest, with development taking over a year. The company understood the challenges of transplanting a game concept between social platforms and mobile/gaming systems. In a March 2011 interview, Rovio's Peter Vesterbacka said, "You can't take an experience that works in one environment and one ecosystem and force-feed it onto another. It's like Zynga. They can't just take FarmVille and throw it on mobile and see what sticks. The titles that have been successful for them on mobile are the ones they've built from the ground up for the platform." The Facebook version incorporate social-gaming concepts and in-game purchases and entered beta-testing in April 2011; the game became officially available on Facebook on February 14, 2012, as Angry Birds Facebook, later renamed Angry Birds Friends.
Improvements for the game include the ability to synchronize the player's progress across multiple devices; for example, a player who completes a level on an Android phone can log into their copy of the game on an Android tablet and see the same statistics and level of progress.
Release
The initial iOS version of the game, which soft launched in Finland on December 1, 2009, and released internationally 10 days later, included a single episode entitled "Poached Eggs" which contained three themed chapters, each with 21 levels. From time to time, Rovio has released free upgrades that include additional content, such as new levels, new in-game objects and even new birds. As updates have been released, they have been incorporated into the game's full version offered for download from each platform's application store.The first update released on February 11, 2010, added a new episode called "Mighty Hoax", containing two new chapters with 21 levels each. Updates released on April 6, 2010, added the "Golden Eggs" feature, which placed hidden golden eggs throughout the game that would unlock bonus content when found, and a new episode called "Danger Above", which initially contained a single chapter of 15 levels, released on April 23 under version 1.3.0. Two later updates added two more chapters to "Danger Above", each with 15 levels. "The Big Setup" episode, released on July 16, 2010, as version 1.4.0, added a new chapter with 45 levels and additional Golden Egg levels.
A fifth episode, called "Ham 'Em High", launched on December 23, 2010, in celebration of the game's first year on the iOS App Store. "Ham 'Em High" contained 15 American Old West-themed levels in a single chapter; updates on February 4, 2011 and March 17, 2011 each added one new 15-level chapter. "Ham 'Em High" also introduced the Mighty Eagle, a new bird that may be used once per hour to clear any uncompleted levels. The Mighty Eagle can also be used in previously completed levels, without the once-per-hour limit, to play a mini-game called "Total Destruction" in which the player attempts to destroy as much of the scenery as possible, both with the standard birds and the Mighty Eagle, achieving 100% destruction earns the player a Mighty Eagle feather for the level.
In 2011, the Mighty Eagle was offered as a one-time, in-game purchase, and was initially only available for iOS, as its App Store customers have iTunes accounts with pre-linked credit cards. Rovio begun testing an Android update called the "Bad Piggy Bank" with the Elisa wireless service in Finland and T-Mobile, which allows users to charge in-app purchases, such as the Mighty Eagle, to their mobile phone bills. The service went live on Android with the release of version 2.2.0 in August 2012, using Google Play's transaction system, which allows both mobile billing and credit cards, allowing both Android phones and WiFi-only tablets to unlock the features. This version also added the power-ups from the Facebook version and added an option to pay to remove ads, allowing Android players to play the game ad-free as iOS players can.
The sixth episode, "Mine and Dine", was released on June 16, 2011, with 15 new mining-themed levels and a new Golden Egg. A July 25, 2011 update would release 15 further levels, and an update released on August 25, 2011, concluded "Mine and Dine" with the final 15 levels.
The seventh update, "Birdday Party", was released on December 11, 2011, to commemorate the second anniversary of the first release of the iOS version into the iTunes App Store. It included 15 new birthday cake-themed levels, as well as updated graphics and the addition of elements from the spin-off games, such as the scoring graphic seen in Angry Birds Rio and the introduction of Bubbles, the orange bird that first appeared in Angry Birds Seasons. The update was later released for Android and Microsoft Windows. The eighth update was released initially to iOS on March 20, 2012, in a lead-up to the release of Angry Birds Space. The new update included an animated tutorial, enhanced gameplay, redesigned user interface, and the first 15 levels of "Surf and Turf", the Angry Birds Facebook-exclusive episode. Another 15 levels were added later on August 2, 2012, with the iOS version receiving the power-ups first seen in the Facebook version.
On October 9, 2012, the final chapter of "Surf and Turf" was released, along with a new episode titled "Bad Piggies" to promote the spin-off of the same name. Another update was released on December 11, 2012, the 3rd anniversary of the game's release, with 15 new levels to "Birdday Party" and 15 new levels to "Bad Piggies". The second set of 15 levels in "Birdday Party" introduced the pink bird Stella to the game. 15 final levels were later released for the "Bad Piggies" episode on March 7, 2013. On the same day these final 15 levels were released, Angry Birds became "Free App of the Week" on the Apple App Store until March 14, 2013, and became an instant hit on the Top Free App charts on the App Store until March 18, 2013, when the app returned to the normal price of $0.99.
An update released on July 22, 2016, introduced the Mighty League, a competitive side mode in which players compete against others' scores to rank up through leagues.