Rovio Entertainment, the company behind Angry Birds, has released the sequel to its highly addictive game for Android five years after the original game was launched to mobile gamers who eagerly and angrily tried to defeat the evil pigs by using birds to shoot at them.
The sequel, which is of coursed named Angry Birds 2, is not actually the second Angry Birds game that rolled out from Rovio's doors. In fact, more than a dozen spinoffs have been released since 2009, with the hope that the later versions could bring in the same level of success as the original game.
But while Angry Birds has been downloaded more than 920 million times since its release according to Rovio, not a single one of the 16 spinoffs had seen the same kind of success. For instance, Angry Birds Season, which was released in 2010, has less than half the amount of downloads as Angry Birds, while Angry Birds Transformers, which was developed in collaboration with Hasbro, only has 30 million downloads to date.
It is clear, therefore, that Rovio is pinning a lot of its hopes on Angry Birds 2, even while launching other mobile games to take a shot at success and making money from its licensing business. Still, there can only be so many people who want to buy Angry Birds-themed t-shirts and mugs, and the numbers say it so for Rovio, which made $158.3 million in yearly revenue in 2014, which is a 9 percent drop from 2013's figures. This followed a mass layoff involving 110 employees.
The new Angry Birds 2 has the same goal as the original game, where players catapult birds into the air as missiles and kill the evil pigs that have stolen their eggs. The new game, however, has a number of major changes, including the use of better graphics and the option for players to decide what bird they want to launch and when, which means players will now have to add some strategy to the came.
Of course, the pigs have leveled up too, as they now have new kinds of crates that are more difficult to take down. There is, however, a new gun that blows up the pigs so they burst out of their constructions. And for players who aren't satisfied being angry at the greedy swine, Angry Birds 2 has new levels where they can try and defeat the boss pigs.
Rovio is also going the way of King's Candy Crush by offering a slew of in-app purchases to let people play without interruptions. For instance, when players lose all their lives, they have to wait 30 minutes to be able to play again or spend $0.99.
For now, it is unclear how the game will fare with audiences, but the first users who have tried the app have mixed reviews for the game. Many people are happy with the new graphics, birds and levels, but as expected there aren't very many who are happy with the new life system.
Angry Birds 2 is now available for download from the Google Play Store.
