Have you ever seen the Alfred Hitchcock film, “The
Birds”?
The film, which was released in 1963, depicted a
situation where killer birds swarmed over a seaside town in California. The birds attacked children, adults...nobody
was immune. I’ll readily admit that the
movie made me fear birds for about a month afterwards, and I even talked about
the movie for a spell back in October when I wrote about Alfred Hitchcock. You can read that blog entry if you click
HERE, but only if you want to.
At any rate, it’s never quite explained what
exactly happened to the birds in the film to make them go absolutely insane
with murderous intent, but whatever it was, it must have made them mad enough
to leave bite marks and scratches all over Tippi Hedren’s face.
In short, they were some mighty angry birds.
You know, come to think of it, today’s blog entry
also focuses on angry birds as well.
Only, in this case, these birds are more fun than frightening.
Of course, I’m talking about the app that made smart
phones buzz with anticipation, and is played by millions of people both online
and through their 4G networks.
This blog entry is all about “Angry Birds”.
You might have noticed that I have blown up the
font a little bit larger than normal.
This is intentional. For one, the
game itself has only been around for two and a half years, so there’s very
little information to dig up in regards to the game. And, for another, I’m sure that most of you
out there would rather PLAY Angry Birds instead of reading about it. So, I’ll make this entry short with the
promise that if you read it in full, you can find a link to the online version
as a reward.
(Or, you could simply scroll down to the
bottom. Either way, it’s incentive,
right?)
So, how did Angry Birds begin?
In 2009, a Finnish mobile video game company,
Rovio Mobile, began to brainstorm ideas for a new video game to be downloaded
onto mobile phones. Staff began
reviewing various game proposals, and eventually came across a character design
sketched by senior game designer Jaakko Iisalo.
The design showed a cluster of angry looking birds that had no visible
legs or wings.
It was a simple design, but the development team
seemed to like the sketches very much.
At the time though, they weren’t exactly sure what sort of game they
were going to do, but they knew that they had to incorporate the bird design at
some point.
As the game was developed, programmers and developers
were puzzled on what kind of antagonist the birds would have. They knew that they had to have some enemy,
but weren’t sure of what to do.
But then the “swine flu” epidemic of 2009 was
plastered all over the news, and soon after, the development team had their
answer.
Pigs.
More specifically, pigs in a brilliant shade of
green, in various sizes. The pigs were
sketched out, and became the main enemy of the little red birds.
Now things were moving along. Soon after, the concept of the game was
created. Taking inspiration from
physics-based games such as “Crush the Castle”, the team went to work on
designing the game levels for the game.
I suppose this is a good enough time as any to
describe how the game is played.
You start each level with a small group of
birds. As is the case with every level,
these birds are very, very, angry. Most
of the birds are red in colour, but there are variations as well. Yellow birds, for instance, increases its
speed the longer it flies. Blue birds
can split off into three smaller birds.
Black birds will explode on contact with whatever it hits, and white
birds can drop explosive eggs onto the ground.
Now, in each level, you have a slingshot that you
can use to shoot the birds at whatever angle you wish. The object of the game is much like the
classic storybook “The Three Little Pigs”, only without all that huffing and
puffing. You have to knock down the structures
(which can be made of wood, ice blocks, or stones and boulders). In the process, you want to turn our pigs
into bacon, ham, and sausage by making their own buildings cave in on top of
them. If you succeed in killing every
pig before you run out of birds, the level is completed, and you move onto the
next round.
The game was officially released on December 11,
2009, and almost immediately became a huge success all over the world. Praised for its addictive nature, comedic
gameplay, and a relatively low cost as compared to other popular mobile games,
the game quickly became one of the most downloaded mobile app of 2010.
Here’re some more facts for you about the
game. Did you know that between mobile
phones and online, the game has been downloaded over one billion times? That’s a lot of people playing Angry Birds,
isn’t it?
Angry Birds has also spawned a multimillion dollar
merchandising empire on top of the game downloads. You can buy Angry Birds T-shirts, pajama
pants, board games, and stuffed animals of all your favourite Angry Birds
characters. Believe me, my fifteen year
old niece is obsessed with Angry Birds to the point where a quarter of her
wardrobe is filled with sweaters with bright red flying birds stitched front
and center on them.
The original game became so successful that four
spin-off games were created between 2010 and 2012, including “Angry Birds Rio”,
and “Angry Birds Space”.
Believe it or not, there are even plans in the
works to create an animated series, or a movie based on the Angry Birds
franchise. Not sure how exactly that
will work out, but considering that a movie based on the board game “Battleship”
is set to be released on May 18, I suppose anything is possible.
It seems hard to believe that a video game about
angry birds would have even a spot in the competitive marketplace...at least it
did back in the days before it was created.
But while the birds in the game were angry, the developers of the game
couldn’t be. After all, those angry
birds netted them a huge fortune!
Now, as promised, I have included a couple of
links to the Angry Birds online game. If
you happen to use the Google Chrome browser (which is the browser that this
blogger currently uses about 95% of the time), you can click on this link to
play the Angry Birds online game.
I haven’t tested this link on other browsers, so I
don’t know if it works. But, if it doesn’t
you can use this one as well. It’ll take
you to the Rio version.
Happy playing!
J
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