Video Game / Angry Birds: Transformers

If you'd have bought Super Mario Bros. Transformers as a kid, you're not allowed to complain.

Angry Birds! Transformers!
Birds disguised as robots in disguise!
Angry Birds! Transformers!

— Main theme of the game, by Vince DiCola and Kenny Meriedeth

Angry Birds Transformers is a 2014 mobile game and yet another spinoff of Angry Birds, putting a new spin on the game's concept in the same vein as Angry Birds Go! and Angry Birds Epic. It's essentially a Rail Shooter starring the Angry Birds and Bad Piggies cosplaying as Transformers. The Excuse Plot is that the Allspark (which transformed into the Eggspark along the way) has fallen to Earth, turning the birds and pigs into the Autobirds and Deceptihogs but also turning the Eggs into Eggbots which then turn anything they shoot into mechanical lifeforms. Thus, the Autobirds and Deceptihogs have teamed up to stop the Eggbots from taking over Piggy Island.

Each level has a specific Transformer attached to it who moves through the level, taking out Pigbots (Minion Pigs converted into mooks by the Eggbots) and structures while being shot at. Each Transformer has a different weapon and alt-mode (used to dodge falling towers and some weapons) and they can be joined by Energonicons, small satellites with abilities powered by collecting energon cubes. Players can also summon an ally, who will tag along for a few seconds shooting everything in sight.

On the world map, stages can be played if they've been affected by the Eggbots, or they'll gradually generate coins if unaffected. The Eggbots can attack any stage controlled by the player. Once the player reaches certain levels, they can explore new areas, revealing new Transformers to unlock.

As IDW Publishing currently holds the comic rights to both franchises in America, they produced a 4-issue limited series based on the game straddling 2014-15, written by John Barber and drawn by Marcelo Ferreira.

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This game contains examples of:

• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: It's a very minor example compared to the truly legendary Allegedly Free Games, but there's an element of this: upgrades and missions take hours and when an eggbot starts to generate a level, completion time can range from fifteen minutes to four hours, and a maximum of six levels are available at once. Crystals can make these things finish instantly, but they're given in very small number during normal gameplay. You can buy more with real money, but the problem with that is that skipping past multi-hour wait times costs *hundreds* of them - and thousands when you're talking a multi-day upgrade. (2500 crystals costs $49. Skipping the wait time of the longest upgrades can cost about 3000. That's to advance ONE CHARACTER by ONE LEVEL.) If you're going to make skipping waits with crystals a normal part of your daily gameplay, you'd better be the richest person in the entire world, and you'd better not intend on that remaining true for very long.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • Nemesis Prime and Airachnid are both exceedingly villainous characters in their source material. Here, they're both Autobirds.
  • The Pigbots downplay this in the comic adaptation. In the game, they're robotized victims of the Eggbots assisting them in opposing both Autobirds and Deceptihogs. In the comic however, they're on the Deceptihogs' side, who eventually also team up with the Autobirds to stop the Eggbots.
• Adaptational Villainy: The Eggs (having been turned to Eggbots by the Eggspark) are the antagonists, while the Pigs have teamed up with the birds.
• Advertised Extra: For a while Stella as Arcee was only in the loading screen and promotional artwork. In 2015, Stella's characters Arcee and Airachnid were added to the character roster (in "Coming Soon" status) and made playable as buddies in March 2015's update, then made potentially available as "prizes" in the dimensional portals in the May 2015 update.
• All or Nothing: The Ultimate characters have this as a play condition, as they lose both the Pigbots and coins they've earned in a level if they're knocked out; all other characters still earn the coins.
• Arm Cannon: All the characters except for Grimlock have these as their primary weapon.
• Anti-Air: One of the secondary weapons causes an EMP blast that on its lowest charge is a OHKO against missiles and some flying enemies and with more charges will also stun regular enemies. For a Transformer with a slow weapon that's really not suited for airborne targets such as Heatwave or Sentinel Prime, this is a godsend. Prior to the 2015 update, it was the EMP Stunner. Its Energonicon replacement is the Electroblast.
• Artificial Stupidity: The AI partners tend not to try to hit TNT blocks (or kill pigs by attacking structures at all). They also sometimes give priority to missiles when they cannot possibly hit them.
• Bigger on the Inside: Astrotrain is big enough to fit Omega Supreme and combiners inside, even though they're obviously too big to enter.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The Electroblast Energonicon shoots down anything in the air (missiles or Pigbots) and stuns enemies. All the flashy, damage-dealing Energonicons pale in comparison to to the abilty to shut down everything on-screen for a second or two.
  • The Shieldor Energonicon is just a forcefield, but it nullifies all damage, including falling monoliths, walking mortar towers, and missiles, lasts longer than the Electroblast, and can be easily spammed in levels with lots of cyberformed structures.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: All the Pigbots look exactly alike, but some may be carrying weapons that do obscene damage in comparison to all the rest.
• Breath Weapon: All transformers played by Hal shoot a beam from their mouth that stays on the target until it's destroyed.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: It's an Angry Birds game. You can either wait long amounts of time for things to recharge or finish, or buy some crystals and use them to instantly finish. You can also use Telepods to instantly repair a Transformer.
• Composite Character: Aside for all the characters being fused versions of an Angry Birds character and a Transformer:
  • Optimus Prime's a long-nosed semi truck like in Transformers (2007) and has the iconic G1-esque "window-bra." After a few levels of upgrading, he gets a movie-style four window chest and a Powermaster in his tummy grill. Ultra Magnus goes through the same changes.
  • Galvatron combines elements from his G1 and Transformers: Age of Extinction versions.
  • Soundwave has the alt-mode of his Transformers: War for Cybertron incarnation, but is described as a "weaponized boombox" more like the G1 version.
  • Sentinel Prime, being a palette swap of Heatwave, has a fire truck as his alt mode, which is a callback to Sentinel Prime's alt mode in Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
  • Although Stella is Arcee and Airachnid, both resemble Arcee's G1 form (Airachnid being a Palette Swap with some extra kibble) but both turn into a racing motorcycle like Arcee's Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen incarnation.
  • Bludgeon's color scheme and alt mode are reminiscent of his G1 robot form, although the spikes on his head resemble the crest on his Pretender shell's helmet.
  • All of King Pig's characters incorporate Megatron's "tank treads as feet" design from Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen.
  • Lockdown's design is inspired by his appearence in Transformers: Age of Extinction.
• Cooldown: How often you summon an ally is dependent on a cooldown meter.
• Dastardly Whiplash: The Chef Pig, as both forms of Soundwave and as Soundblaster. He twirls his mustache (even while running) and has a sneaky posture when laughing in his stat screen.
• Death from Above:
  • Heatwave and all of the other variants both fire their weapons straight up, which causes a beam(s) of light to come down and hit enemies.
  • One of the special weapons (the Energon Airstrike, replaced in the 2015 update with the Strikebot Energonicon) calls in Skywarp to do a strafing run with his missiles. The January 2015 update also allowed the player to, every 24 hours, use Skywarp on the world map to clear three levels (for increasing amounts of crystals per use) by doing an air strike on them; this feature was eventually removed.
  • Explosive-laden Pigbots will drop in on balloons in some levels.
  • The walking mortar towers launch large flaming rocks that make a huge explosion when they hit the ground. While they'll bounce off the big stone columns and the Shieldor Energonicon's shield, carefully balancing running and driving/flying is the only way to avoid them, and even then you'll likely be tagged by the explosion.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: The Seekers' miniguns are very weak in comparison to all the other characters, but they compensate by spitting an endless stream of shots at targets.
• Deflector Shield: The Shieldor Energonicon (formerly the Energon Shield) protects you from harm for 3 to 10 seconds depending on how many energon cubes you've picked up to power it.
• Dynamic Entry: When a support character is summoned, they're dropped in by Astrotrain and land on the battlefield with a huge shockwave which damages everything on the screen. This will instantly shatter ice and heavily-damaged wood and stone blocks, and is useful for detonating missiles early.
• Embedded Precursor: Not a game, but on the world map there's a link that will take the player to a site that streams episodes of The Transformers.
• EMP:
  • The Electroblast Engergonicon (formerly the Energon EMP Stunner) produces three different levels of EMP depending on how many energon cubes it's powered with. One cube fries missiles and flying Pigbots and temporarily stuns walking mortar towers, two also stuns stationary Pigbots, and three will also take out Pigbots on balloons.
  • Shooting down the body-scrambling missile will produce a two-cube strength EMP.
• Enemy Mine: The Angry Birds and Bad Piggies are fighting as normal before the Eggspark transmutes everything. Afterward, the Autobirds and Deceptihogs work together to fight the Eggbots.
• Equivalent Exchange: Because the Energon versions of characters are suffused with energon, they have more powerful weapons but take more damage when shot.
• Experience Meter: This is in the top left corner of the map screen, showing your level and the number of stars needed to get to the next level out of 5.
• Exploding Barrels: As in regular Angry Birds, the structures in the levels occasionally contain TNT crates.
• Expy: Rather than being based on her villainous counterpart from Transformers: Prime, Airachnid is based almost entirely on Blackarachnia from Beast Wars.
• Fighting Clown: Almost all the characters qualify to some extent, but the Seekers (with their googly eyes, "Carlton Dance" when upgrading, and general awkwardness) and the King Pig as Bludgeon, Megatron, and Brawl (with Bludgeon's painted face and all having goofy expressions and backwards driving) are the best examples.
• Fish Eyes: The Minion Pig (as both Starscream and Thundercracker) has these, and has a goofball exuberance which translates in-game to being fast but hard to aim and with a (initially) weak but fast-shooting laser.
• Floating Limbs: It's not obvious at first glance, but characters' limbs, hands, and feet aren't attached to their body (this is made very apparent when they transform, or during some characters' upgrade dances).
• Foil: Heatwave could be seen as the polar opposite of Thundercracker. Thundercracker is a Fragile Speedster that transforms into an aerial vehicle and destroys his enemies with a Death by a Thousand Cuts, Heatwave is a huge Mighty Glacier that transforms into a ground vehicle and destroys stuff with a singular massive shot.
• Forced Transformation: The missiles which launch from the background do this two ways.
  • One missile will turn your Transformer into a washing machine which bounces down the road 5 times. It doesn't harm you, but it does make you a sitting duck for enemy fire and falling columns. There's also a bonus achievement you can pick up if you board Astrotrain at the end of a Deceptihog level while in this form.
  • A different missile will scramble your Transformer’s body for a few seconds, putting you at the same disadvantage as the former.
• Funny Background Event: The March 2015 update made these part of the victory screens. If you have a Deceptihog character and thank an Autobird buddy, your character will sometimes back up and offer the "spotlight" to the buddy to show off, then do something funny in the background like dance or point their weapon at the buddy, only to stop and look innocent when the buddy looks back. Lockdown is the exception; he just crosses his arms and sneers.
• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • Players have had their entire save files deleted, including purchased items.
  • In 2014, the game had severe issues with the Lollipop software upgrade to Android phones; it would lock up repeatedly during levels, sometimes to the point of causing the game to shut down.
• Gatling Good: The Seekers' weapons are small miniguns, which explains their ridiculously fast firing rate.
• Gotta Catch Them All: The January 2015 update organized the characters into various squads. As you unlock characters in a squad, you get increasing amounts of bonus coins when a level is completed with one of those characters. Completing certain numbers of squads also earns you achievements and crystals.
• Gravity Master: The weapon used by both versions of Megatron creates a gravity well that pulls in everything near it, causing impact damage. Ultimate Megatron's weapon fires two shots with a weak gravity effect, while Dark Megatron's weapon is a single-shot with a much stronger gravity effect, sending blocks and Pigbots flying even at low levels.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Lockdown will pull off one of his arms and knock the Autobird off the screen in the "thank the buddy" stage if you refuse the thanks.
• Handshake Refusal: The screen where you can thank your buddy for assisting you has multiple ways to do this.
  • You can opt to refuse to thank the buddy. In this case, if the player and buddy are both Deceptihogs, the player will distract the buddy with a "Hey, look over there!" gesture, then boot the buddy offscreen when he looks. If the player and buddy are opposite factions, the player will celebrate, the buddy will give him a shove, and then the player will knock the buddy offscreen in some fashion.
  • If you opt to thank the buddy, but you're different factions, the buddy will sometimes pull a "sike!" on you when you try to slap him five. He'll then try to play it off as a joke (except for Arcee and Airachnid who just laugh at you), only for you to shove him/her off-screen. The exceptions are Heatwave and Sentinel Prime, who just stand there for a couple of seconds and then duck off-screen as if thinking "Well, this is awkward..." and Grimlock, who can't return the highfive because of his short arms and starts sulking before being shoved away. Later updates introduced other refusals, such as Galvatron and Scorponok giving a hearty Evil Laugh, but the outcome is the same.
• Heal Thyself: Energon characters get a health boost from energon cubes along with the power-up to their Energonicon.
• Homing Projectile:
  • The missiles will track you wherever you are and will only miss if you've been turned into a washing machine or scrambled (in which case they'll fly off the top of the screen) or if they're blocked by structures or columns. They'll even follow you as you walk/drive into Astrotrain, but won't do anything to you once you're inside him.
  • In the city levels, there's a large black missile that sometimes appears near the end of a level and slowly homes in on you. It originally didn't hurt you, but after a later update it will now cause serious damage, with animation of you being tossed into the air by it.
• Imperial Storm Trooper Marksmanship Academy: Zig-zagged and justified, some pig bots have buckets over their heads that understandably make them terrible shots, but most can hit the player quite easily, though shifting in and out of vehicle mode can throw their aim off. There’s also an energonicon called Confuddle Bot that invokes this.
• Interface Screw: Along with the screen distortion that sets in if your Transformer is at one heart or less of health, one of the background missiles will splatter ink on the screen for a couple of seconds.
• Jack of All Stats: Red as Ultra Magnus. His stat maximums are evenly matched and his weapon and speed are pretty average in comparison to the other Transformers. Red as Optimus Prime was intended to be this, but his slower weapon speed and slower stat growths make him the Master of None.
• The Last Straw: In Energon Galvatron's cartoony intro, he's shown shooting up a bunch of Pigbots while billowing smoke from damage. He seems to have won...and then he blows up after a butterfly lands on his head.
• License-Added Game: The birds and the pigs don Transforming Mecha from the Transformers franchise (the birds are the Autobirds and the pigs are the Deceptihogs) and for a first in the series has the birds actually walk from point A to point B destroying the pigs on the screen. "Leave the slingshot at home - this time you got REAL firepower!"
• Life Meter: Two are used. Anything you can shoot gets the standard green bar that turns red as damage is taken, while the player character gets five hearts that gradually go away as damage is taken.
• Lightning Bruiser: The King Pig as Bludgeon. While his stat maximums are evenly matched like Red's, his weapon is a fast-shooting Spread Shot which is much more effective than most other characters' weapons even at lower levels, and he has above-average speed both on foot (so to speak) and in tank mode.
• Make Me Wanna Shout: Soundwave and Soundblaster, appropriately enough, use an "acoustic resonator" as their Arm Cannon. In the upgrade screens, you can see that the end of the weapon is a speaker cone when the bot is posing with it.
• Master of None: Red as Optimus Prime is going for a Standardized Leader or Jack of All Stats thing, but with his mediocre stats and lack of a gimmick (his weapon simply being a moderately firing single-target laser), there's really nothing to recommend about him. The Energon and Ultimate versions are a little more powerful but still have the same general flaws.
• Merchandise-Driven: It's the lovechild of two such franchises. The Telepods feature allows consumers to buy the toys, and then use QR codes on them to enter them into the game. The Jenga spinoff in particular seems to be created to capitalize on the game, being an older game updated to match a newer game that's been modified to fit an older franchise.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • Terence and Hal. All are slow in both modes, especially Hal, but can take a lot of punishment and their attacks are pretty much a One-Hit KO on any pig. Also, Heatwave/Sentinel Prime's weapons do a lot of damage to towers but take a long time to use, while Grimlock's beam is fast-shooting but sits on its target until it's destroyed, meaning you may have to tap around the screen a lot in crowded fights.
  • The combiner characters have the slowest walk speed in the game and don’t have a vehicle mode, but they don’t take damage at all from missiles or falling monoliths, can one shot walking mortar towers, and destroy any enemy the level throws at them.
• Money for Nothing: The opposite of the situation with gems. Coins are awarded by the gazillion for everything you do, and nothing costs more coins than you get in an hour of playing. It is not uncommon for a longtime player to have tens of millions of coins and nothing to do with them. This was eventually remedied with "crates" that can be opened for 15,000 coins each for rewards of varying usefulness (opening ten at a time guarantees you at least one rare one.)
• Motivation on a Stick: In Goldbite Grimlock's intro, Optimus is riding him and leading him along with a crown hung in front of his face.
• Multiple Head Case: All of the Blues' Transformers have the triplets as the bots' three heads.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The loading screen displays random tongue-in-cheek references to either Transformers or Angry Birds (such as "Rhyming with Wheelie" or "Angering Birds").
  • The game transitions from the map to a selected level with an Autobird symbol that changes to a Deceptihog symbol and vice versa depending on your Transformer in the same way that the action would shift between factions in the original cartoon. The music is even identical.
  • The Telepods include a base shaped like the Autobot Matrix of Leadership from G1.
  • The words and phrases that appear over the level bar are roles associated with the Transformers on their character bios.
  • Megatron's weapon being a black hole gun is a reference to his G1 bio, which says his fusion cannon can be linked to a black hole for unlimited power.
  • Ultra Magnus is a white and gray Palette Swap of Optimus Prime, hearkening back to his G1 toy being a white-painted Optimus Prime toy that the trailer attaches to become the actual character. Some of his accessories are a blue helmet and shoulder missiles, which make him look more like Magnus's full form.
  • One of Thundercracker's accessories is his Prime Counterpart's Arms Micron: Silver Metal Balo.
  • Brawl's accessories are a rocket launcher (resembling a cross between his movie version's wrist and shoulder cannon) and a double barreled gun (resembling the weapon that could be attached to the tank mode of his G1 self).
  • In Goldbite Grimlock's intro, Optimus is shown riding him like a horse.
• Never Shall The Selves Meet: Subverted—despite the fact that both Megatron and Galvatron are present at the same time, there are no ill-effects. Also, nothing's stopping your assist character from being a different version of your character (for example, Bumblebee and Ultimate Bumblebee, Soundwave and Energon Soundwave or Soundblaster, etc. can share a screen.)
• Ninja Run: Prior to the May 2015 update, Soundwave and his reskins all ran like this when they weren't shooting. Now, Soundblaster's running pose is slightly different.
• Non-Indicative Difficulty: Each level has a difficulty rating that players can see before they begin the level. However, the rating has... very little to do with the stage's actual difficulty. A "Very Easy" stage can have Earthquakes that can kill the player five seconds after the stage begins, and a "Very Hard" stage might just be filled with Mooks with no major hazards. The difficulty levels were eventually dropped.
• Overheating: This is a side effect of Galvatron and Grimlock's weapons; use them too much and they overheat and shut down for a few seconds, which can leave you in dire straits at times and enforces pacing your shots.
• Palette Swap:
  • Zig-zagged. Prior to the May 2015 update, several characters were just palette swaps of others, usually with a different or upgraded weapon. Now, most of these characters have had changes to their movement to make them more distinct. For instance, Sentinel Prime now walks with a hunched-over posture and always looks at the ground whereas Heatwave walks more upright and looks at the background when firing, and Bludgeon and Brawl treat their tank-tread feet almost like skates instead of just rolling along like Megatron.
  • Humorously invoked by Bumblebee, who slaps some black paint on Sentinel Prime in order to tell him apart from Heatwave. Sentinel's not happy about this.
• Pec Flex: Both versions of Lockdown do one after exiting Astrotrain.
• Piñata Enemy: Occasionally, an Eggbot will show up in a level, walking in front of you. You can shoot him repeatedly to gain coins until he runs offscreen; this process repeats a couple more times until he goes limp and flies off the screen.
• Player Tic: Finishing a level by going into vehicle mode right before you enter the Astrotrain.
• Product Placement: On phones, the January 2015 update turned the Energon Shield into the State Farm Energon Shield for some characters. The icon featured the State Farm logo; when activated, a small machine with the logo flew behind your Transformer and projected the shield, which had "State Farm" running across its surface.
• Rail Shooter: In this case, the rail is the course layout. The only control the player has on the course is turning into vehicle mode, which makes him go faster (how fast depends on the character).
• Running Gag: There are a couple associated with Soundwave and Soundblaster, namely them getting blown up while trying to use energon cubes in the Energon characters' intros and Ultimate and Dark Megatron using their chest boxes for a toaster and disco party, respectively.
• Schizophrenic Difficulty: The levels all have a listed difficulty that has almost no bearing on its actual difficulty. A "Very Easy" level might have the Boss in Mook Clothing that can destroy the player in two hits, whereas a Hard level might just be filled with mooks that do nothing but shower the player in coins.
• Shapeshifter Weapon: All the characters turn their right hands/forearms into their weapons with the exceptions of Megatron, Galvatron, Bludgeon, Brawl and Shockwave who have straightforward Arm Cannons by default, and Grimlock and his variants.
• Shockwave Stomp: When a support character drops in from Astrotrain, this is how they make their Dynamic Entry and cause damage. It's also likely a Mythology Gag to Blackout's EMP stomp from Transformers (2007), using an identical effect.
• Shout-Out:
  • Some of the characters' dances while upgrading are from famous dances. The Seekers do the Carlton Dance, Soundwave and Soundblaster do Michael Jackson's Thriller dance, Grimlock does part of John Travolta's dance from Saturday Night Fever, and Heatwave and Sentinel Prime do an Irish jig from Riverdance.
  • The Sharkticons are Pigbots wearing shark suits that leap out of the water and shoot at you. You could say they're sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads.
  • Nautica does the “Naruto run.”
• Shows Damage:
  • Your Transformer picks up electrical crackles around him as he drops in health. Once he reaches one heart he starts giving off smoke and flames and the screen starts showing static and distortion. This same distortion also appears for a second if he gets hit by a falling column or a boulder from the mortar towers.
  • Walking mortar towers will start smoking and flaming as they get close to being destroyed.
• Silent Bob: Terence's Transformers^note Heatwave, Sentinel Prime, Ratchet, Ironhide, and Hound do all of their emoting with their eyes since they never change expression otherwise and barely move in comparison to the other characters. Humorously subverted when you see their dance animation.
• Spread Shot:
  • Bludgeon, Soundblaster, and Airachnid fire the typical fan-pattern three-shot spread.
  • Sentinel Prime fires three blasts into the air; one hits the aimed-at target and two hit nearby targets.
  • Bluestreak throws a grenade which, after it hits the target, drops three smaller grenades around the area of the target.
• Sprint Meter: The alt-mode meter functions as one. Unlike a summoned ally, players can transform when it's not full, and revert before the meter expires. It recharges when in robot mode.
• The Starscream: Ironically enough, not Minion Pig as Starscream, but Chef Pig as Soundwave/Soundblaster. He's constantly scheming behind King Pig's back. Although in the comic adaptation, Starscream himself does want to take the Eggspark for himself.
• Suicide Attack: If you give flying Pigbots enough time, they'll crash themselves into you. The Pigbots on balloons are also meant to drop down and ram into you.
• Threatening Shark: Sharkticon Pigbots will leap out of the water to shoot at you, and will follow you doing this as long as they can.
• Tron Lines: The "Energon" versions of characters; this is a Mythology Gag to Transformers: War for Cybertron.
• Unwilling Roboticisation: The Eggbots are trying to "cyberform" Piggy Island. In each level, the Pigbots you fight are the minion pigs that have fallen victim to this, and shooting cyberformed buildings and plants releases the energon cubes that power the Energonicons.

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