Angry Birds

***Angry Birds*** (also known as ***Angry Birds Classic*** or simply ***AB Classic***) is a puzzle slingshot game released in December 2009 and was later rereleased in 2022 as: **Rovio Classics: Angry Birds**

## Gameplay

In the game, the player launches the Angry Birds from a slingshot at pig fortresses containing the Bad Piggies who stole their eggs. Seven flock members debut in this game (Red, The Blues, Chuck, Bomb, Matilda, Hal and Terence), while two others (Bubbles and Stella) migrated from the indirect sequel, *Angry Birds Seasons*. Six types of pigs also appear, including three sizes of Minion Pigs, along with the Corporal, Foreman and King Pigs. There are over 700 levels in the game, spanning over 17 episodes, along with the Golden Eggs scattered across the game that the player can find.

## Plot:

The game takes place in the isolated Piggy Island. A flock of rare multi-colored birds, led by Red and containing the Blues (Jay, Jake and Jim), Chuck, Bomb and Matilda, guarded a nest containing three eggs. However, from the distance watched the Bad Piggies, led by the greedy King Pig Smooth Cheeks. These pigs have been relegated to eat grass, and King Pig, who, unlike his ancestors, has never eaten eggs and needs to keep that fact a secret, has had enough. Meanwhile, Red witnessed a mosquito touch one of the eggs. Furious, Red tried to fight the mosquito, but it got away (though in the cinematic trailer, he managed to defeat it). King Pig saw his chance, and, along with other high-ranking pigs Corporal Pig and Foreman Pig, stole the eggs while Red wasn't looking. Red and his comrades spotted the empty nest, and screamed in shock. Red, along with Bomb and Matilda, mourned the loss of the eggs, while the Blues spotted footprints leading to the pigs, whom Chuck had spotted. Using a slingshot, the birds slung themselves towards structures made by Foreman Pig, and managed to defeat all three elites and get their eggs back.

Afterward, the multiple episodes show the pigs trying new ways to get the eggs. The birds meet more members of their species along the way (Hal and Terence), and the battle continues to places such as a forest, a desert, a mine, a beach, a laboratory, and more. After the birds take out King Pig in a laboratory, his comrade, Foreman Pig, starts to get more control over the plans. He steals the eggs while the birds are visiting a farm, and after the birds defeat him there, he enters a time machine and goes back to the Triassic period of the world. The birds destroy many structures based on prehistoric animals before the pigs are defeated for what was seemingly the last time. The birds celebrate their victory while the pigs ride dinosaurs.

## History:

### Development

Undergoing a financial crisis, Rovio Entertainment Corporation got its workforce reduced from 50 to 12 employees, and the staff started looking for proposals to overcome this.

One proposal made by Jaakko Iisalo in a simulated screenshot, where round birds were launching themselves into squares, drew attention to them by wondering what was happening in such image and approved it. The developers then started to further develop it.

As the picture gave no clue of what was being played, they started to wonder how the gameplay could be. As cannon games were famous back in the day, the developers used a similar concept.

They also noticed the birds had no enemy. Jaakko Iisalo liked to draw animal characters and pigs were something natural that came in his sketches. He never saw them as malicious, for him, the birds are the aggressive side while the pigs are just mischievous. The Swine Flu outbreak had a bit of influence when designing them, but wasn't a direct influence.

The game initially had some Role Playing elements where the player could modify the flock of birds.

The estimated initial price to develop Angry Birds was to exceed €100,000 ($113,869.30).

Angry Birds was made by a team of four people and took at least eight months to finish

Rovio partnered with distributor Clickgamer to publish the game to the app store. Chillingo has claimed to have participated in the game's development, as they were said to be responsible for adding trajectory lines, pig grunts, zoom option and birds' athletic jumps before going to the slingshot and waiting.

Since then, Rovio has self-published almost all of the later ports of the game, except for the PSP version, which was produced under license by Abstraction Games.

On December 11, 2009, the game was released for IOS and Nokia devices. The game was initially paid and didn't sell many copies.

After *Angry Birds* was made a featured app in February 2010 on the United Kingdom, it reached the 1st position in a small period of time, and then reached the 1st position on the paid apps chart in the United States App Store in the middle of 2010 and stayed there for 275 days.

On April 1, 2010, *Angry Birds HD* was released, featuring a retina display and HD graphics.

Knowing this, the developers started to develop an Android version of the game. They observed that Android had much different configurations; The combinations numbers of software versions, processing speed, even the user interfaces were significantly larger than the iOS version. The team then 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 devices.

On October 15, 2010, the game was launched for Android devices, and the developers then started porting the games to other devices. The game's beta for Android hit more than one million downloads in three weeks.

In April 2019, the game was unlisted in the app stores but came back and received a new update. Afterwards, it was then unlisted again in July 2019. Rovio Entertainment Corporation stated that they had removed the games for testing purposes, but never explained what the test was. Later, the statement was changed to say that the game was removed because Rovio did not want to keep updating the game.

In June 2021, it was announced by Rovio on Twitter that efforts were going to be made to bring some of the original Angry Birds games back to online stores sometime in the future. Later in November, Rovio announced that work had already begun for a recreation of the game using Unity instead of their own game engine. It features the same style as the original version, with small improvements on gameplay, and incorporating cloud-saving. The recreation was slated for an early 2022 release and, unlike the original version, is a premium title, thus having no ads. The remake was later announced to be called *Rovio Classics: Angry Birds* and released on March 31, 2022.

### Updates

Originally, when the game was first launched, it had only one episode: Poached Eggs and only 5 characters: Red, the Red Bird, The Blues, the Blue Birds, Chuck, the Yellow Bird, Matilda, the White Bird and Bomb, the Black Bird. But on February 12, 2010, Mighty Hoax was released, adding more 42 levels to the game and on April 2, 2010, they released the Golden Eggs. Every other new episode afterwards is released in parts. On April 23, 2010, they released Danger Above, with 45 levels, with 3 Golden Eggs, and adds the Green Bird Hal to the game.

On July 16, 2010, The Big Setup, which adds 45 levels, 3 Golden Eggs and the new Big Red Bird Terence, was released. On December 23, 2010, Ham 'Em High was released, with 45 levels, 3 extra ones, 3 Golden Eggs, and the new Power-Up bird Mighty Eagle, that costs $1.00 to buy permanently. Afterwards, on June 16, 2011, the episode Mine and Dine was released, with 45 levels and 3 Golden Eggs. On December 11, 2011, the Birdday Party episode was released to commemorate the game's second anniversary, with 15 levels, one Golden Egg and Bubbles, the Orange Bird from Angry Birds Seasons.

On March 20, 2012, the episode Surf and Turf from *Angry Birds Friends* was added to the game. On December 11, 2012, 15 new levels for Birdday Party were released, with one Golden Egg and Stella, the Pink Bird from *Angry Birds Seasons*.

On October 9, 2012, the episode Bad Piggies, with 45 levels and was released to commemorate the *Bad Piggies* game's release. On August 2, 2012, Power-Ups were added to the game.

On July 3, 2013, the episode Red's Mighty Feathers was released, containing 30 levels, the first being normal levels and the second being the new Egg Defender levels, with 2 Golden Eggs, and featuring Red's new ability, Mighty Feathers. In the IOS version, a RED event was happening, where players could buy the Red's Mighty Feathers Power-Up, and a unique Golden Egg was featured, that was later made obtainable in all versions.

On November 26, 2013, the Short Fuse episode was released, featuring 45 levels, 1 Golden Egg, and Bomb's new Shockwave ability, and its Power-Up. On December 11, 2013, 15 more levels were released to Birdday Party.

On July 22, 2014, the episode Flock Favorites was released with 15 levels, of which are set in the previous episodes but in new levels. In December 2014, Birdday 5 was released with 30 fan levels and the new Rhinoceros. On June 23, 2015, 15 additional levels were released to Flock Favorites. Another 15 levels were released to Birdday Party in December 11 of the same year.

On July 18, 2016, the new feature called The Mighty League was released with 8 leagues that originally had 3 levels for each day. In October 13 of the same year, the Sticker Book was released for it. In November of the same year, Bird Island was released with 21 levels, new stickers and a Golden Egg for the Mighty League, but the players had to wait until November 17 to play the 21 levels.

In December 11 of the same year, 15 more levels were released to Birdday Party, with more Mighty League stickers and a Golden Egg.

On February 27, 2017, the episode Piggy Farm was released, with 15 levels. Then in March 30, more levels and a new Mighty League Golden Egg in the Medal section. In May 17, the last 15 levels of the episode were released, along with Coins, Gems, and The Mighty League being changed to have 6 levels each day. In June 19, the Tutorial episode was added, with 15 levels.

In August 23 of the same year, the Jurassic Pork episode was added. In September 14, 15 extra levels were added to the episode and in November 21, the final 15 levels were added. In December 14 of the same year, the Star requirement for unlocking episodes was added to the game.

In August 2018, the episodes could now be unlocked by watching advertisements. In January 2019, The Daily Challenge feature was added to the game.

## Trivia

* American television hosts Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart, and Daniel Tosh have referenced the game in comedy sketches on their respective series, *Conan*, *The Daily Show*, and *Tosh.0*.
* Some celebrities to have admitted a penchant for the game include TV host Conan O’Brien, actress Angelina Jolie, singer Kylie Minogue, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (2010-2016) David Cameron, actor John Hamm, singer Justin Bieber, singer Pete Wentz, and actress and singer Anna Kendrick.
* Nokia used the game to break a world record in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to promote an attempt to set a world record for the largest number of people playing a single mobile game (1,080).
* It has been estimated that at one point, people all over the world spend 200 million hours a day playing Angry Birds.
* In the Android version of *Angry Birds*, it is possible to disable the backgrounds, replacing it with a single-color backdrop, likely to help the game run smoother on older hardware. This option is not available in the iOS version of the game.

* On March 16, 2021, Angry Birds was officially inducted into the Pocket Gamer Hall of Fame.
* Likely due to the 2022 re-release of the game, all versions of *Angry Birds Classic* after 7.5.0 oddly became unplayable with an internet connection on Android devices as of January 22, 2022. However, these versions of the game are still playable without an internet connection, and version 7.5.0 and older still work. Version 7.6.1 and later also still work on iOS.
* In North Korea, there is a phone called the "touch phone" that released in 2018 that runs a custom build of Android and has 5 preinstalled Angry Birds games in it, including Angry Birds Classic. The other Angry Birds games on it are Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio, Angry Birds Space and Angry Birds Star Wars.
* In the in-game trailer, the birds have ability icons. Red has a note, Chuck has a silhouette of himself accelerating, The blues has a silhouette of 3 birds, Matilda has a falling egg, and Bomb has an explosion