Angry Birds is an artillery simulator/Puzzle Game. The premise of the game is that some evil, egg-munching pigs have raided the nests of some birds who mean to get their eggs back, whatever it takes. Said egg retrieving involves launching the birds from a slingshot at the pigs, who are protected behind elaborate obstacles of wood, glass, and stone. It's a simple concept, but the execution is often anything but easy.There are several different types of birds, most of which have a special ability activated by tapping the screen in mid-flight:
Red is a simple projectile; aim and launch.
The Blues (Blue Jay, Blue Jake, and Blue Jim) are loaded into the slingshot as a single tiny bird, but when launched, they can be split into three tiny birds.
Chuck (yellow) doubles his speed and acts like a missile.
Bomb (black) acts likea bomb, blowing up shortly after he lands or if you tap the screen.
Al (green toucan) acts like a boomerang, reversing direction and speeding up.
Terence (large red) is slow but, on impact, will either cause a lot of damage or move a lot of blocks.
Bubbles (orange) is small, but puffs up into a larger size if you tap the screen, pushing everything around him out of the way. He deflates after a short while.
Stella (pink) releases bubbles that lift objects into the air and then drop them when the bubbles pop.
The "Year of the Dragon" episode of Seasons introduces the Mighty Dragon which does the same thing as the Eagle but in a different fashion.
The upcoming "Philadelphia Eagles" edition for Facebook will introduce a version of the Mighty Eagle known as the "Mighty Philadelphia Eagle". It's safe to assume that he will have the same Smart Bomb function as the other two.
Trilogy incorporates this as a challenge mode; it still clears all the pigs automatically, but you're awarded a percentage score per level based on how many blocks are destroyed.
The Rio version adds Blu and Jewel as special birds in some levels, in two different versions: Chained Heat, where they fly straight forward with a large impact, and Blu alone, who flails around madly after landing or tapping.
Space gives the regular birds a slightly Darker and Edgier makeover (seen as they pass through the space warp in the backstory animation) and changes some of the colours. In particular, Terence becomes green, the Mighty Eagle becomes a Space Eagle that wipes out everything around the launched fish tin instead of killing every pig, and Chuck becomes purple and will travel at high speed towards whatever point you touch on the screen. The game introduces a completely new light blue bird shaped like an ice cube that freezes all items around it, making them easily smashed by the Blues. The summer 2012 update introduced bonus levels in which you fire eggs that hatch into mini-black holes, which don't do much damage themselves but which you have to use to attract pigs and scenery so that they smash into each other.
AB Star Wars not only has the birds cast as characters from the films, they have character-appropriate abilities. The red bird (Luke) gains a lightsaber that lets him cut through obstacles and reflect blaster bolts. The black bird (Obi-wan) has a Force push. The yellow bird (Han Solo) shoots a blaster. The orange bird (C-3PO) explodes instead of inflating. Instead of being the white bird, R2-D2 has an egg for his body and can shoot electricity. The pink bird (Leia) has a tractor beam. And instead of the Mighty Eagle, there's the Mighty Falcon (Millennium Falcon), which flies by strafing the pigs.
The Puzzle Game aspect (and the game's main source of difficulty) revolves around the best use of the available birds in each level to collapse the obstacles onto the pigs, as all the pigs have to be taken out to win a level. Scoring per level is based on pigs killednote 5000 points per pig, damage done to the obstacles, and the number of birds left over at the end of the levelnote 10000 points per bird, with 1 to 3 stars awarded upon completion based on all of the scoring factors as well as points. In some levels, it's more important to finish using as few birds as possible; in others, it's a matter of causing as much destruction as you can. Achievements can also be earned for finishing episodes, three-starring all levels in an episode, scoring a certain number of points in an episode, and other things. Each episode also includes a number of hidden Golden Eggs which, when found, open bonus levels.Four versions of the game have been released to date, with a fifth one upcoming:
The original, with nine episodes released to date.
Angry Birds Seasons, featuring (mostly) holiday-themed episodes. The 2011 Season contains episodes for Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Saint Patrick's Day, Easter, summer, and the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival. The 2012 Season, so far, has new Halloween and Christmas episodes, as well as episodes themed after the Chinese New Year, Cherry Blossoms, Atlantis, and "back-to-school". The 2013 Season, so far, has new Halloween and Christmas episodes.
Angry Birds Rio, a sequel / Crossover with the movie Rio wherein the birds are captured and shipped to South America.
Angry Birds Star Wars, a sequel / Crossover with the Star Wars franchise. Unlike Angry Birds Rio, which featured the normal birds alongside the cast of Rio, this game utilizes the Universal Adaptor Cast trope, with birds and pigs alike portraying the various characters.
Originally released for smart phonesnote iOS, Android, Symbian, WebOS, Windows Phone, the game is now available for play on tablet computers, e-readers, the Google Chrome web browser (which was accidentally harder for a while due to physics errors that badly nerfed Bomb, but they fixed it recently), as a Playstation Minis app note playable on the PlayStation Portable and PS3, and on Facebook. As of November 2011, Angry Birds, in all its incarnations, across all platforms, has been downloaded 500 million times. The only game with distribution figures that come close to this mark is Tetrisnote 35mil via Game Boy; 100mil via phone. However, this is for copies sold, and only on those two platforms; there are no figures for PC, nor for pirated or shareware versions. It's even been parodied on an Israeli sketch comedy show, which used the endless conflict between the birds and the pigs as a metaphor for the Arab Israeli Conflict.Related is the Angry Birds Holiday Comics series and the Angry Birds Toons series.The long-awaited Bad Piggiespig POV game finally came out in September 2012.Soontobecomea major motion picture.Comes with a character sheet.
Two or three animated shorts have aired on Nickelodeon, and are now able to be seen through the various games.
The cartoon series Angry Birds Toons premiered in March 2013 and is available on every Angry Birds game.
Artillery Game: In a loose sense of the term — the slingshot controls your launch angle and speed, each bird leaves a visible shot trail, and the goal is to eliminate your opposition (either through direct hits or, more often, collateral damage). But the pigs aren't actively aiming and shooting at the birds in return, and you only have a limited number of birds to take out the pigs with.
Asteroid Thicket: The premise of several levels in Angry Birds Space.
Subverted in some bonus levels which are built around chain reactions; there's a random chance that the mechanism does partially fail, and some of these can be failed completely if you don't shoot a bird properly to trigger the chain reaction.
Touching the birds' eggs. A mosquito touches one, and gets a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. A butterfly who manages to tip over an egg suffers a similar fate.
Birds in captivity sets them off as well, to the point they rope in Blu and Jewel to fight.
Level 4-15 is a battle against Nigel, who appears twice more in cameos, one to send marmosets out against the birds, and the other to capture Jewel and Blu. He reappears again in level 12-15 for the climactic battle.
Level 8-15 is a fight against the marmoset leader, who jumps around on platforms. He shows up again in level 14-15.
The final levels of the first two planets in AB Space have boss battles against the King Pig in a tank-like contraption and flying saucer, respectively. The fourth planet has a boss battle against a pig so large, it generates its own gravitational field.
In AB Space, you can earn Space Eagles for completing the first two planets; once you run out, you have to buy them. (Or you can just leave the game and come back later to "earn" one.)
In both Angry Birds Friends (the Facebook app) and the latest release for the main game (2.2.0), you are able to purchase "power-ups" for use in-game. The power-ups include: Super Seeds (makes the bird grow larger), the King Sling (super-powered slingshot), Sling Scope (you can see the flight path before launch), and Birdquake (an earthquake occurs).
In AB Star Wars, you can either pay $1.99 to upgrade Luke's lightsaber to the green version (slightly longer and more powerful), or you can finish the entire 40-level Dagobah-themed "Path of the Jedi" episode.
Brick Joke: In Angry Birds Rio, when the birds first get abducted, their eggs are left behind. At the end of the game, the pigs appear and are about to eat the eggs when the birds crash the plane on top of them.
Helmet Pigs are pigs wearing old-school military helmets, making them that much tougher.
In "Mine and Dine," some pigs wear miners' helmets.
In AB Star Wars, the pigs are playing (among their many roles) stormtroopers and Imperial officers, so their respective helmets pop up frequently. Of course, there's also Darth Vader.
Crossover: Angry Birds Rio, in which the poachers from the film capture the birds, who escape and set out to rescue Blu and Jewel. Subsequent levels are set in the movie's Rio de Janiero and have the birds targeting the marmosets instead of the usual pigs. Blu and Jewel are also available as ammunition in some levels.
Among The Merch is "Angry Birds: Knock On Wood", a board game version complete with plastic blocks, pigs, rubber birds and slingshot. The board game was apparently popular enough to get its own sequels, such as "Angry Birds: On Thin Ice".
Even more sequels, with two seasonal versions and two store exclusives. Space has two "episodes" of its own too.
There are now several physical versions of levels from AB Star Wars available, as well as plushies and "action figures" of the various birds and Pig Vader.
Another subversion: a Finnish news outlet had an April Fools article stating that the Formula One drivers Heikki Kovalainen and Kimi Räikkönen were given Angry Birds slingshots to start their cars with. Complete with a Photoshop of the slingshot on a car.
Disaster Dominoes: Several levels can only be solved by causing collapses at strategic points that trigger additional collapses. On the other hand, hit the wrong spot and some of the pigs will be too well protected by fallen rubble.
Disproportionate Retribution: The trailers often show how disproportionate the birds are to insects who merely touch, much less tip over, their eggs.
Distressed Birds: Al and Bubbles, who are first appeared being these.
The original five birds joined this trope just for the fourth episode of the original game.
Empathic Environment: The planet-sized alien fish in the "Pig Dipper" episode of AB Space will react to your moves, looking surprised or angry as debris, pigs, and birds land on them.
If you fail a level, the remaining pigs do this as the last bird disappears and the "Level Failed" screen comes up. Even the pigs' grunting while you're playing a level sounds like laughter at times.
Nigel does this in Rio if you flub a shot, and in the "level failed" screen.
Also, in Rio, if you fail a level populated with only marmosets, you get a dancing marmoset thumbing his nose at you and screeching, which sounds like laughter.
An animated pig in an air bubble does this on the "level failed" screen in AB Space.
Darth Vader laughs at you on the "level failed" screen in AB Star Wars.
The Team Benefactor: Al (The most awkward bird to use, but the only bird that can go backwards, which bailed the birds out from losing in the animated shorts.)
In the game's fluff, the other birds are terrified of the Mighty Eagle and offer it a can of fish as payment for fighting the pigs. In-game, when you use the Eagle, a can of fish appears by the slingshot (replacing any unlaunched birds) which you launch at the pigs; the Eagle comes zooming in and lands on or near the can. See the trailer here.
The Mighty Dragon from Seasons is a bit more jovial, but still has to be convinced to help via a fresh golden fish.
Follow the Leader: To truckloads of artillery games, and followed by plenty of imitators itself.
Fore Shadowing: Green pigs. Doesn't that start rumours of a space-themed game?
Four Temperament Ensemble: Red is phlegmatic, Chuck is sanguine, Bomb is choleric, and Matilda is melancholic.
Friendly Fireproof: Subverted. The birds can't hurt each other, either through impacts or special attacks. However, a bird that's stunned or jumping into the slingshot will knock out a launched bird, so carefully timing launches and waiting until the bird(s) poof out from where you want to aim are generally good ideas.
In at least one level, a bird could get stuck and refuse to disappear. [1]
Be careful if you're running an old version on XP, because an update glitch can not only crash the game but curse it unto the seventh generation, to the point where uninstalling and reinstalling will not let you run the game.
If the pigs just gave up on eating the eggs and ran for it, they'd save themselves a world of hurt.
In the spin-off 2011 Christmas comic, the King Pig thinks that the meaning of Christmas is for him to eat all day long.
Goofy Print Underwear: The "boxers with red hearts" variety can be seen flying out of destroyed luggage in Rio.
Gravity Sucks: This is a game mechanic in AB Space, as all the planets have a gravitational "bubble" that not only pulls the birds toward them, but can also pull floating pigs to the ground to be eliminated if they're pushed inside it. It also affects how everything falls once a bird hits something, as objects will scoot/roll around the planet in the direction they fall until their momentum runs out. This carries over to AB Star Wars
Chuck's ability zigzags the trope in Space. Gravity affects him as long as he's just flying or after he hits something, but his speed boost makes him immune to gravity.
YouTube can be your best friend if you're stuck on a level. There are also multiple websites, such as angrybirdsnest.com, dedicated to showing runthroughs of levels.
Finding the golden eggs. Here are some of the more nonsensical ways to get them:
Tapping the sun on the level select screen.
Tapping the treasure chest on Level 1-8. The word "chest" will have to be typed in on the PC and Mac versions afterwards.
Selecting "Danger Above", then scrolling the screen all the way to the left.
Launching Matilda backwards, then tapping the screen so that Matilda "jumps" and hits the middle of the pause button.
Harmless Villain: The Bad Piggies. Even when they're under attack, all they do is stand around. Some are even floating aimlessly in Angry Birds Space, and many times, the pigs are sleeping as long as there's not a bird near them. They have no means of fighting back or harming the birds.
An Ice Person: The blue cuboid bird in Space freezes solid everything in its blast radius as its special ability. This can often take out pigs immediately, and makes things like wood and stone brittle enough that blue birds can shatter them easily.
Kid Appeal Characters: Bubbles, Stella, and The Blues are respectively Types I, II, and III.
King Mook: The King Pig, who can take a lot more damage than a normal pig and also wears a crown.
The Birdday Party levels in the original game feature background landscapes that look like food, and cakes are included in the actual levels.
The Utopia levels in Space feature planets and obstacles made up of doughnuts, ice cream cones, popcorn, etc.
Mama Bear / Papa Wolf: The birds can count for either if you want to assign them genders.
The Merch: In many kinds, but especially the line of plush Angry Birds (which range from keychain-size to softball size), which includes the Rio characters, and several have electronic game sounds. And are safe enough to throw at things!
In the original animated video, a mosquito decides to chow down on an egg and is beaten to a pulp by the birds. The pigs steal the eggs while they're busy with said beating.
In the video that introduces the Mighty Eagle, a butterfly brushes an egg and tips it off the edge of the nest. The birds watching the nest pound the poor butterfly into the ground.
Not Quite Dead: The King Pig. No matter how many times he gets killed in the game, he (or is that another King Pig?) is rough and ready for another round.
Oh Crap: In Space and Star Wars, the pigs look scared when a bird or debris gets close to them. One of the possible scoring achievements in Space is to scare at least 6 pigs with one bird.
100% Completion: Getting all three stars on every level up to and including Birdday Party (on iOS) or Surf 'n' Turf (on Android) in Angry Birds will unlock a golden King Pig face on the Golden Eggs menunote Alternatively, you can buy a King Pig figure from Mattel's Apptivity toyline and use it on the iPad version to unlock it. Touching it will take you to a random level of the game, with a special random game mode in effect. Scoring Points is completely averted at this point. These game modes are:
Remixed Level: Material Mix Up! — Two types of materials in the pigs' structures have been swapped, affecting the level's difficulty in some way.
Silliness Switch: King Pig — The pigs are replaced with eggs, and the birds themselves are replaced with pigs. Each bird is reinterpretated as a pig with its special ability retained in some way.
Timed Mission: Bird Frenzy! — You are given a limited amount of time to complete the level with unlimited, but randomized, birds.
Unexpected Gameplay Change: Total Destruction! — Again, you have limited time, but this time you can simply tap anywhere to create an explosion.
Our Dragons Are Different: The Mighty Dragon resembles a traditional Chinese dragon with a long, serpentine body and antler-like horns, though his head is shaped suspiciously like that of the Mighty Eagle.
Opening the Sandbox: In the first game, you can't play any of the other episodes until you clear the first one. This is averted as of the Birdday Party update, which unlocks all episodes by default.
Put the "Laughter" in "Slaughter": Not only do the birds laugh and cheer when you complete a level, several of the birds sound like they're laughing when you draw back on the slingshot, and yell delightfully as they're launched.
Real Life Writes the Plot: During the game's development, the developers decided that the birds needed an enemy once the game had been developed enough. At the time, the "swine flu" epidemic was taking the media by storm. Now you know why the birds' enemies are pigs.
All of the theme tunes for the various episodes of Seasons are holiday-appropriate reworkings of the original's theme (for example, Christmas carols for the Christmas episodes, creepy organ for Halloween, an early-sixties rock'n'roll pastiche for "Back to School").
"Rio" used a samba rearrangement of the theme.
"Space" has a bombastic John Williams-style arrangement for the main theme, and SF atmospheric background sounds.
"Star Wars" reworks the classic intro music to fit the theme.
Rube Goldberg Machine: Some of the golden egg levels are this, if not self playing levels.
Senseless Sacrifice: Happens often. If you make a miscalculation, the bird can go flying over the top, missing everything, or the bird can hit a structure but not cause any significant damage.
In the Wild West-themed "Ham 'em High" chapter, Level 14-5 has a DeLorean as one of the decor pieces.
In Seasons:
Level 17 of the "Summer Pignic" episode is a space-themed level which is set on the moon; the obstacles resemble a lunar lander and a moon car. It was released on July 8, 2011, the date of the final launch of the space shuttle Atlantis, which was also the final launch of the space shuttle program.
Some of the floating pigs are inside structures that look something like TIE fighters.
In the "Red Planet" episode, the pigs hijack the Curiosity rover and use it as an egg-stealing device. The episode features other Mars rovers to be found in order to unlock bonus levels.
The pigs get black eyes, lumps, and bruises as they take glancing hits. If you fail a level, beat-up pigs show missing teeth when they grin.
In the game, the birds look stunned after they hit something, and the green bird's beak crumples. In the artwork, the birds show the same kinds of injuries as the pigs, and the red bird's beak is crumpled.
If the pigs are wearing helmets of any sort, they'll pick up cracks and holes as the pigs take damage.
Individual components of the obstacles show cracks before breaking completely.
The Space Eagle was not shown or mentioned in the promotion for Angry Birds Space.
Matilda never even appears in any Angry Birds video trailer, and her only prominent appearance was in a Chinese cross promotion for Coca Cola and the summer Olympic games.
Smug Snake: The pigs certainly look very satisfied with themselves, particularly if you fail to complete a level. Somehow, the more damage they take, the more insufferably smug some of them look.
Space Is Cold: In Space, pigs exposed to the vacuum of space will freeze solid and shatter. If they enter a gravity well on a planet, they'll unfreeze and act just fine.
The Blues are able to easily shatter ice. However, they are useless against wood and rock.
Chuck easily breaks through wood, but is stopped short by rock and ice.
Bomb punches easily through rock, but is less effective on ice and wood.
Taking You with Me: Subverted; the game treats the birds like kamikazes, but it's pretty clear that they don't die, especially after watching the cartoons.
Bomb is the only bird who's played straight, due to his ability to self-destruct.
Too Dumb to Live: The pigs don't fight back in any way as a game mechanic, but more properly, they seem to build the flimsiest possible fortifications and put boulders and TNT boxes all over the place, as if daring the birds to blow them up. Also, they mistook a bubble egg as an actual egg in the Back to School (AB Seasons) trailer. Another thing is that they keep trying to steal the eggs, despite what keeps happening to them.
Toothy Bird: The birds occasionally have visible teeth, especially in the cartoons.
The volcanic vents in the "Red Planet" level of Space.
There are large air vents in several levels of the Cloud City episode in Star Wars that alter bird flight paths and send used birds and debris flying around.
Waddling Head: The Bad Piggies. They look like green pig heads (without legs), but they do leave pig hoof-prints behind.
Watch the trailer introducing Al: the pig in the hat also wears sandals, despite having no visible feet.
What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: The King Pig,no matter how evil and obnoxious he may be, still has an air of amusing adorableness in him. Whether that works is up to you.
times. The only game with distribution figures that come close to this mark is Tetrisnote It's even been parodied
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