Let’s Play Angry Birds Action! – (IAP) In-App Purchase Analysis

Just when you think it’s safe to return to the skies, those pesky Angry Birds return with another new game and new style of gameplay to capture your attention. While this isn’t as big a diversion in gameplay as the likes of Angry Birds Transformers or Angry Birds Epic, it’s definitely a whole new Angry Birds experience which continues the familiar bird flinging antics that the games are well known for, but melds them into a fast and furious arcade-style smash-em-up.

Each of the 90 Angry Birds Action! levels are more akin to a destructible pinball table than they are the levels we’re used to in the original game and many of the spin-offs. The viewpoint is very much the kind of tilted top down view you’d expect from something like Zen Pinball, but rather than having a ball in continuous motion, here you take turns to fling Red about the level, smashing various obstacles as you strive to save eggs and collect valuable items.

Chuck, Bomb and Terence are also playable in the game and along with Red, each character is modeled the version found in the upcoming Angry Birds Movie, due out later this year. Each character also has their own unique abilities to change up the gameplay, but as far as we can see, there’s currently no way to play as other well known characters, like Stella, Matilda or The Blues, but maybe we’ll see them in a future update.

Angry Birds Action! is currently available for free in the New Zealand appstore, ahead of a global launch later this year and comes with all the in-app purchases you would expect from a game of this type. Gems can be bought for various prices, up to a lofty £54.99 for 3000 gems. These can be spent on keys to unlock gift crates and we suspect also on various powerups (aim extender, invisibility, ghost bird and more) to aid you in the trickier levels.

LEGO 2016 Speed Run – Mixels, Angry Birds, Nexo Knights, Marvel, DC Comics

Here’s our super speed run for 2016 Lego Toy Fair at Nuremberg.

Mixels Series 9:
Cleaning Tribe
Ninja Tribe
Mix TV Tribe

LEGO Angry Birds Movie:
75821 Piggy Car Escape
75822 Piggy Plane Attack
75823 Bird Island Egg Heist
75826 King Pig’s Castle
75824 Pig City Teardown
75825 Piggy Pirate Ship

LEGO Nexo Knights
70323 Jestro’s Volcano Lair
70322 Axl’s Tower Carrier

LEGO City:
60100 Starter Set
60101 Cargo Plane
60102 VIP Service
60103 Airshow
60104 Passenger Terminal
60120 Volcano Starter Set
60121 Exploration Truck
60122 Volcano Crawler
60123 Volcano Supply Helicopter
60124 Volcano Research Base

LEGO Disney Princess
41067 Belle’s Enchanted Castle

LEGO Elves:
41177 Precious Crystal Mine
41179 Queen Dragon’s Rescue
41178 Dragon Sanctuary
41180 Ragana’s Magic Shadow Castle

LEGO Friends:
41123 Foal’s Washing Station
41124 Puppy Daycare
41125 Horse Trailer
41126 Horse Riding Club
41127 Amusement Park Arcade
41128 Amusement Park Space Ride
41129 Amusement Park Hot Dog Stand
41130 Amusement Park Roller Coaster

LEGO Angry Birds Playsets – Pigs Minifigures Revealed

A close up look at the hidden details in the recent image from Rovio around the upcoming Lego playsets from the Angry Birds movie.

Having previously revealed an image starring the birds in Lego style, we here get our first look at what the pigs will look like in a brick incarnation. These kids are for the upcoming movie, which itself is an animated feature not in Lego form.

The image states that “playsets” are coming in 2016, this is an unusual way to describe a Lego toy which is usually simply a “set”. It seems that this naming may indicate more action is involved in the toys.

Although unlikely it could even mean that the Lego Angry Birds will be seen in a video-game cross over product like Lego Dimensions. Previous franchises were thought unlikely, like Portal and Doctor Who, but then appeared in the new toys-to-life game.

Angry Birds Transformers COMPLETE: All Energonicons Crafted, All Characters Lvl 15

With the addition Arcee, Airachnid, Bluestreak and Prowl in the most recent two updates to Angry Birds Transformers, we’ve had a lot of content to try and unlock, but we’ve finally managed it. We now have a full roster of all 29 Autobirds and Deceptihogs, with every team complete and each individual character fully upgraded to level 15 and customised with all of the coolest items. Alongside the character unlocks and upgrades, we’ve also managed to craft every one of the 48 Energonicons:

STRIKEBOT
ELECTROBLAST
LAZERBLAST
DOUBLESLAM
GOLDBRICK
FIREBLAST
CONFUDDLEBOT
IONIZOR
LAZERPHAZOR
P-SHOOTER
MADBOT
POWERSHOCK
LIGHTNINGSLAM
THUNDERBOLT
3-FORCE
ENERGYBLAST
FOCUSFIRE
SPLINTER
MEGABLAST
PULSAR
FASTFIRE
STORMBLAST
WAVEBURST
BUBBLEBOT
BUBBLEPOP
DRILLSMASH
REFLECTRON
SHIELDOR
BOOMSHAKE
POWERBOT
EVAPORTRON
SUB-WOOFER
ANTIGRAV
SUBSPACE
ENERBOT
STONECUTTER
SNIPERNAUT
MORTARNIK
CLUSTERBURST
GRAVITRON
HEALTHPACK
GHOSTBOT
RAPIDFIRE
PHOTOBLAST
LAVATRON
GOLDSLAM
PIGGYBLAST
GLASSOR

Of course, none of this would have been possible without the gem glitch we were fortunate to stumble across in the soft-launched version of the game last year. For those of you looking to acquire, upgrade and craft all of these things, you can expect to sink a lot of time and/or money into the game to reach this level.

Maxing out a single character would cost over 10,000 gems in the game, which would need to be bought as two separate £79.99/$99.99 in-app purchases. To upgrade all 29 characters, you’d be looking at a cost of £4639/$5799! That’s before you might want to spend money on gems to pay to unlock other elements of the game.

Angry Birds Transformers – Bluestreak, Prowl & Energonicon Tested

With the latest update for Angry Birds Transformers patched up and ready to roll, we go on the hunt for the latest characters added to the game. Bluestreak and Prowl follow hot on the heels of Arcee and Airachnid to swell the roster of characters and bring representations of Angry Birds “The Blues” characters into the game.

The new characters, bring with them new powers and upgrades, but they’re not quite as easy to unlock as the regular roster. Squads of Autobirds and Deceptihogs must be sent on missions, some as long as 24hrs, in order to stand any chance of finding these elusive characters. Even then, without a good number of gems to guarantee your mission’s success, you may still come up empty handed.

The addition of new characters isn’t the only change to the game, with the standard three power-ups being replaced by a whole raft of new ones, that can be crafted using materials found in game. Those materials primarily come from completing missions, which again, can require you to spend a lot of gems in order to craft the rarest of the energonicon power-ups. Thankfully we have plenty on hand for our visit to the newly opened Professor Pig’s Lab. We’ll also take ourselves past Rank 200 as we upgrade a number of characters and add a few new customisations to them too.

Angry Birds 2 Game-Play – No Longer Under Pigstruction

While we wait for official news on what exactly Angry Birds 2 has to offer us, it seems that Rovio may have secretly been testing the game out under a different name in Canada. Angry Birds Under Pigstruction is the strangely titled game soft launched in the App Store, and features the same characters as on the Angry Birds 2 posters.

It would certainly make sense of the very odd title of Under Pigstruction, which appeared some months ago and hasn’t been pushed further by Rovio. This kind of soft launch is not uncommon for gaming apps as it enables publishers to test out the game before the whole world gets their hands on it.

No only that but the artwork we are seeing to promote Angry Birds 2 also matches the revised style of characters in Under Pigstruction. Particularly Red, who appears on the iOS icon, looks identical in both games. Furthermore the appearance of Silver bird in the Angry Birds 2 materials also matched with that bird’s appearance in the soft launched game.

The question remains as to whether there will be more for Rovio to announce at its two press conferences on 27th and 28th in San Francisco and New York. Certainly, to my mind there must be more to say with so much marketing spend going on the announcement.

I’m hoping for Rovio to revisit the toys to life genre as they did with their Telepods. The use of those physical toys to unlock in-game birds has dwindled. Many took this for a failure at retail, but perhaps they will here come back with a new NFC technology smart toy to again shake up the sector.

Either way, it will be interesting to see what the full Angry Birds 2 experience looks like. The game will launch soon after on July 20th.

Angry Birds Transformers – Energonicons, Crafting, Bluestreak & Prowl [v1.6.11]

We have another updated for Angry Birds Transformers with both characters and weapons added to the game in a considerable update all round.
As reported in the iTunes listing for Angry Birds Transformers we have:

NEW CHARACTER! The Blues have arrived as Bluestreak and Prowl! Unlock them via Portal Missions.
ENERGONICONS! Knock down those Piggies even faster with fireballs, lightning storms, and many other unique skills by unlocking over 40+ different Energonicons to take into events.
CRAFTING! Use your hard-earned materials to craft Energonicons in Professor Pigs Crafting Lab.

Angry Birds 2 – Characters, Images, Analysis

Here’s the announcement we’ve waited over 6 years and 14 Angry Birds spin-offs for: “Angry Birds 2″.

Angry Birds 2 is announced as the first official sequel in over six years.

The first Angry Birds game was released on an unsuspecting world in 2009. Of course it stormed to the top of the charts and has since then been downloaded more than 2 billion times.

Finland-based Rovio Entertainment revealed the information about Angry Birds 2 today, via their invite to events in San Francisco on July 28 and New York on July 29th.

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Having dipped their two in the Toys to Life genre with the Telepods toys, it will be interesting to see how Rovio take on the likes of Skylanders Superchargers, Disney Infinity 3.0 and Lego Dimensions with this big new game.

Either way, the addition of the number “2” to the Angry Birds title shouldn’t be underestimated. This could tie in with the Angry Birds movie, and the Lego Angry Birds kits announced at Comic Con.

Rovio have avoided doing this through 14 different Angry Birds titles, each of which could easily have been numbers: Angry Birds Rio, Angry Birds Space, Angry Birds Go! and Angry Birds Star Wars.

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The poster teases a “bigger, badder, birdier” experience which could mean anything. Certainly, the announcement will signall a significant advancement in gameplay, perhaps a level designer as has been made popular in Minecraft and Disney Infinity of late.

Rovio, the developer of Angry Birds will be keen to see this Angry Birds 2 improve profits that recent dropped 73% in 2014.