Hello there!
“The Forgotten Ones” is a new series of various blogs coming one after the other, mainly talking about the games not being played by most gamers or people OR the games that deserved the love but were not given. In this episode, we will be talking about Angry Birds.
Introduction
Angry Birds (later known as Angry Birds Classic) was a 2009 casual puzzle game, developed by Rovio Entertainment, released in December 2009 for iOS and Maemo. Since that time, over 12 million copies were sold. Upon seeing the success, the developers decided to launch this game on various other touchscreens platforms such as Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry 10, etc. The series has also expanded to dedicated video gaming consoles and PCs. In 2015, the sequel Angry Birds 2 was released on iOS and Android. Later in 2019, the original game was removed from the app store.
Company Behind
The company behind this game’s development is Rovio Entertainment Oyj [formerly known as Relude Oy (from 2003 – 2005), Rovio Mobile Oy (from 2005 – 2011) and Rovio Entertainment Oy (from 2011 – 2017); internationally known as Rovio Entertainment Cooperation] is a Finnish video game developer based in Espoo. Founded in 2003 by Helsinki University of Technology students Niklas Hed, Jarno Väkeväinen, and Kim Dikert, the company is best known for the Angry Birds franchise. The company currently operates studios in Espoo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Montreal.
History
In early 2009, Rovio staff began reviewing proposals for potential games. One such proposal came from senior game designer Jaakko Lisalo in the form of a simulated screenshot featuring some “angry-looking birds” with no visible legs or wings. While the picture told nothing about what type of game was being played, the staff liked the characters, and the team started to design a game around them. In early 2009, physics games, such as Crush the Castle, were popular flash-based web games, so the Rovio team was inspired by these games. During the development of Angry Birds, the staff realized the birds needed an enemy. At the time, the “swine flu” epidemic was on the news, so the staff made the bird’s enemies pigs. Angry Birds was the studio’s 52nd produced game, but the game did not sell many copies on its initial release. However, after Angry Birds become a featured app on the UK App Store in February 2010 and from there, it quickly reached No.1 there. It also reached the No. 1 spot on the paid apps chart in the US App Store in the middle of 2010 and then stayed there for 275 days. The initial cost to develop Angry Birds was estimated to exceed €100,000, not including costs for the subsequent updates. 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, pig’s grunts, bird’s somersaults on landing.
Upon seeing the enormous support, Rovio decided to expand the game to Android devices further. So, in May 2010, the Rovio development team decided to start developing the game for android. But as they were developing, new issues came to light. They came to know about various configurations of devices in Android systems. So, they listed the primary requirements for the game to run on an Android device (even though the game could not run on some of the newer Android devices and 30 other configurations of the Android system). They enabled the beta testing for Android devices by releasing it on Play Store in September 2010 and finally released the game on October 19, 2010, on Play Store and also on GetJar. Here too, the game received a ton of support from the Android player base.
The Rovio development team also decided to make a version of Angry Birds for Facebook. This was a huge project, with development taking more than a year. The development for this version started in early 2010, with beta testing being done in 2011 and finally releasing it on Facebook in February 2012, with the name “Angry Birds Friends.” This allowed strangers and friends on Facebook to play and compete for making the highest score. The top 3 winners were given “bird coins” to purchase power-ups.
At the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California, Rovio and distribution partner Activision announced plans to bring Angry Birds and two of its spin-off games, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo 3DS systems. Bundled together as Angry Birds Trilogy, the games were built specifically for their respective consoles, taking advantage of their unique features, such as support for PlayStation Move, Kinect, high-definition displays, and glasses-free 3D visuals. The trilogy was also ported to the Wii and Wii U almost a year later.
The game was also released on Windows Phone, Windows, Playstation (PSP, PS3, PS4), HTML 5, and 3D platforms such as LG Optimus 3D.
Clearly, it can be seen that the game was slowly becoming an international sensation. Now, we look into the gameplay style of the game.
Gameplay
Well, most of us have already played this game and already have experienced the feel of this game. Therefore, I will be explaining this part as fast as possible.
The game circles around a group of wingless, legless birds having their eggs stolen by a group of oval-shaped bad piggies. Using a slingshot, we kill those bad piggies, and in the end, get the stolen eggs. This is just a basic idea of what the game actually is.
There are numerous one-of-a-kind styles of birds utilized in the sport, outstanding with using their shape. In the earliest tiers simplest, the primary red-colored bird whose call is Red is available. As the participant advances via the sport extra styles of birds come to be available. Some birds are powerful in opposition to specific materials. A few have unique abilties that can be activated by using the participant whilst the bird is airborne. For example, Chuck, a yellow bird speeds up, Bomb, a blackbird, explodes. Therefore the call, a bluebird named Jay fragments from his siblings, Jake and Jim, a white bird known as Matilda can drop an egg-fashioned projectile, a purple bird Stella can entice gadgets in bubbles, Hal, an inexperienced bird boomerangs back, a massive redbird named Terence; much like Red, does greater harm to systems than his smaller counterparts, and an orange red named Bubbles expands and inflates. The pigs additionally vary, with hardiness relative to their size. Small pigs are weaker and are without problems vanquished with the aid of using direct hits or using particles from the broken systems, whilst large pigs are capable of resisting greater harm earlier than succumbing to defeat. In addition, a few pigs put on hats or armor, making them even greater proof against harm.
Many more elements, such as woods, stone, and glass, were added to the levels to create structures for the piggies. This increased the game’s interactivity and addictiveness. The more factors there are, the more difficult it becomes to accomplish the level with a perfect score. This increased the game’s replay value significantly.
Accomplishments and Awards
The game has achieved a lot and a LOT of awards and praise from the critics. The game has achieved the milestone the company never thought of. Starting off with the critics, they praised the game a lot. Chris Holt of Macworld called the game “an addictive, clever and challenging puzzler,” and Pocket Gamer’s Keith Andrew said, “Angry Birds is a nugget of puzzling purity dished out with relish aplenty.”
If we talk about the accomplishments, the game became the top-selling paid app in UK’s app store in iOS in February 2010, which was then also accomplished in the US’s app store in iOS a few weeks later. The game remained at the top spot for 275 days. Since its release, the limited free version of Angry Birds was downloaded 11 million times, whereas the full-featured paid version was downloaded 7 million times as of September 2010. The Android version was downloaded more than 1 million times in the first 24 hours of release. Even the site started to crash at one point, but it reached 2 million downloads until its first weekend. Rovio received an approximate amount of US$ 1 million per month revenue because of the advertisements in the free Android version. According to Rovio, gamers on all platforms spend more than 5 million hours of gaming time per day. As of May 2012, the series has 200 million monthly active users. As of January 2014, the “Angry Birds” series had been downloaded 2 billion times, including “Angry Birds,” “Angry Birds Four Seasons,” “Angry Birds Rio,” and “Angry Birds.” Birds in Space, Angry Birds, Star Wars I and II, and Angry Birds Go. In terms of awards, “Angry Birds” was nominated for the best casual game in February 2010. At the 6th International Mobile Game Awards in Barcelona, Spain. In September 2010, IGN ranked Angry Birds as the fourth-best iPhone game in history. In April 2011, “Angry Birds” won the best game application and application award. “British Appy Award” of the year. “Angry Birds” was named the best handheld game in the 2011 Webby Awards. Angry Birds HD won the 14th Interactive Achievement Award (later called D.I.C.E Awards) Casual Game of the Year Award and was nominated for Outstanding Game Innovation and Game of the Year. This is the first mobile game nominated for Game of the Year in the award ceremony’s history.
My Opinion
This game was one of my favorites, considering this was my first mobile game on our first android smartphone. My Dad and I used to compete in making the highest score out of us two. Nevertheless, I still wish that the game should be on the Play and App store to feel the same experience once more.
That’s it for the blog. I hope you had a great time! Share your experiences and thoughts about this game down below. Till then, see ya later !!