Release the pigs!
October 15, 2010 2:12 PM   Subscribe

Angry Birds, the iPhone gaming sensation (and possible movie), is now available on Android for free in ad supported form. Not got a fancy phone? Maybe you can play the home game.
posted by Artw (57 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
The official site is struggling a little at the moment, so you probably want to go direct to the market or getJar if you want a copy.
posted by Artw at 2:18 PM on October 15, 2010


Great game!

Most of the levels have YouTube tutorials. In case you get stuck on some like I did.
posted by morganannie at 2:19 PM on October 15, 2010


This thing has been fuckin' difficult to get ahold of, even off getjar.
posted by boo_radley at 2:28 PM on October 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


I like this game (Palm Pre FTW!) but who cares?
posted by k8t at 2:29 PM on October 15, 2010


I managed to complete every Angry Birds level with 3 stars the other day. Possibly the most pointless achievement of my life. I did it so that I could get it out of my mind and go back to the only other game I've played on my iPhone – Backgammon. (Not a gamer – obviously.)
posted by i_cola at 2:30 PM on October 15, 2010


Guys, there's a game for a phone.
posted by basicchannel at 2:34 PM on October 15, 2010 [2 favorites]


Pepsi Blue Birds
posted by Joe Beese at 2:42 PM on October 15, 2010


Grr. "The page you are looking for is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later."

How the hell am I supposed to waste the last few hours of my Friday workday if I can't get the app? Productivity, thou art a bane I will yet smite!

I've heard so much about this, and I've come to believe that I do need to fire some birds at egg stealing pigs. It's not a sentence I ever thought I'd type, but there you have it.
posted by quin at 2:45 PM on October 15, 2010 [2 favorites]


It's an addictive game. Kudos to its developers.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:49 PM on October 15, 2010


I've also gotten 3 stars on everything, but I can't for the life of me figure out how I have less than half the points of the top person on the Apple Game Center leaderboards (who sits at 34 million points). I've tried playing some levels again, but I can only get slight increases in points out of them. This blows my mind.
posted by shen1138 at 3:00 PM on October 15, 2010


So I'm assuming that someone, somewhere has built all the levels of Angry Birds in Minecraft.
posted by dersins at 3:11 PM on October 15, 2010 [8 favorites]


Ah yes. I have it now.

Productivity? You are slain.
posted by quin at 3:15 PM on October 15, 2010


Yeah, GetJar's been struggling pretty badly. Said they didn't expect that much demand. Heh. Heh heh. FINALLY got it to download just now.
posted by katillathehun at 3:25 PM on October 15, 2010


Em, how is this not a complete rip-off of crush the castle?
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 3:29 PM on October 15, 2010


I got it off the market with no problems at all. Interesting that they have gone ad supported rather than charging a dollar like on the iphone. I thought that they could have been selling angry birds 2, 3 and 4 on that rather than putting so many levels into the original game, and instead they have gone even cheaper.

For some additional context, this is, as I understand it, pretty much the biggest selling game on the iphone.
posted by markr at 3:35 PM on October 15, 2010


Durn Bronzefist - There's actually a pretty long history of artillery games.
posted by Artw at 3:39 PM on October 15, 2010


Nice game. It's one of the few cellphone games I've paid money for. (N900 FTW! ;))
posted by wierdo at 3:58 PM on October 15, 2010


Artillery game, nothing. This isn't a scorched earth clone. This looks exactly like crush the castle. But with birds.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 3:59 PM on October 15, 2010


They both came out in late 2009. I don't know how hard these things are to develop, but it doesn't seem likely that they would've ripped it off that fast and that successfully.
posted by katillathehun at 4:00 PM on October 15, 2010


Okay, mid-to-late 2009. Something like that.
posted by katillathehun at 4:02 PM on October 15, 2010


An OpenGL app with physics, nice graphics and sound effects isn't something a dev shop whips out overnight.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:06 PM on October 15, 2010


I don't play the game, but I still thought this was interesting: The Physics of Angry Birds
posted by gemmy at 4:23 PM on October 15, 2010 [2 favorites]




Top Games of 2010: An open-ended mining sim with 1995-era graphics, and a recycled Flash game.

What would Marty McFly think?
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:44 PM on October 15, 2010


Just got an iPhone and it's the only game I've purchased for it. Very addictive...my wife can't put it down.
posted by jimmythefish at 4:55 PM on October 15, 2010


Angry Birds my arse. It should be called Angry Church.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:08 PM on October 15, 2010


Trainyard Express is where it is at.
posted by hellphish at 5:47 PM on October 15, 2010


It may be a clone of Crush the Castle, but it's also a significant improvement. Killing smirking green pigs is much more fun that implacable royalty. Angry, squawking birds are cute. The use of the different ammunition requires thought and strategy, unlike Crush the Castle, where you just use the highest yield ammo.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:22 PM on October 15, 2010


Microsoft caught some flack just this week for including the Angry Birds' logo on their Windows Phone 7 site, without permission or a port to the platform even planned by the developer.

A corporation like Microsoft could not be so foolish. This game is really significant.
posted by Mr. Anthropomorphism at 6:39 PM on October 15, 2010


I find that I really prefer the new game Cut The Rope, which has very different game mechanics but similar means of tracking progress. With Angry Birds, the path to greatest success is often inscrutable; by its very nature very small changes in the angle of one's shot(s) can lead to wildly different outcomes, which makes luck a larger component of overall success than I'd prefer. Cut the Rope is more skill-based.
posted by The Confessor at 7:10 PM on October 15, 2010


Birds, shmirds. The fantastic Pocket Frogs are free.
posted by CunningLinguist at 7:29 PM on October 15, 2010


It ran fine on my phone for a while but now it's all herky-jerky. This is why I can't have nice things.
posted by Lucinda at 7:45 PM on October 15, 2010


It ran fine on my phone for a while but now it's all herky-jerky.

Yes, Java will do that.
posted by i_have_a_computer at 7:54 PM on October 15, 2010


I just can't get into the phone as a gaming platform. I've installed a few but just can't get excited about playing a game on such a small screen.
posted by octothorpe at 8:12 PM on October 15, 2010


Agreed on the phone being too frustrating to play on. The only types of games I could ever get into were things like Bejeweled, where there were simple objects taking up the whole screen. Anything else just reminded me of playing games on an old Mac Color Classic with the 9-inch monitor.

*grumble grumble* Using the words 'home game' got my hopes up for a desktop download *grumble grumble*
posted by Hardcore Poser at 9:03 PM on October 15, 2010


Birds, shmirds. The fantastic Pocket Frogs are free.

The kids at my house range in age from 3 to 15, but they all love Pocket Frogs.
posted by not that girl at 9:17 PM on October 15, 2010


Also, the Angry Birds Live game was charming and fabulous.
posted by not that girl at 9:17 PM on October 15, 2010


Psst. Android apps need not be written in Java anymore, there is a native code interface now. Just sayin ;)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:52 PM on October 15, 2010


Jon Hamm is the reason I bought Angry Birds.
posted by SarahElizaP at 10:24 PM on October 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


I find that I really prefer the new game Cut The Rope

Oh my god I am so into Cut the Rope.

and and and Mirror's Edge was 59p yesterday and Plants vs Zombies and and and
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 12:48 AM on October 16, 2010


I find that I really prefer the new game Cut The Rope

It's really satisfying finding the solution to the riddle!
posted by ersatz at 4:41 AM on October 16, 2010


Angry Birds is a big hit in our house. We are actually making Angry Birds Halloween costumes for the whole family (one kid as the small red bird, one kid as the yellow bird, the grown-ups as wood/glass/metal towers with piggie heads placed here and there).
posted by mothershock at 7:40 AM on October 16, 2010 [2 favorites]


I'm still expecting someone on Fox News (or maybe The Daily Star newspaper) to declare that Angry Birds is a thinly-veiled metaphor justifying Jihadist suicide bombing campaigns, and should be banned.

The pigs (obviously representing the secular West) steal the birds' eggs (obviously oil! Or religious freedom. Or something) and the birds are left with no option but to hurl themselves to their deaths, bringing down the shaky western imperialist system on the pigs' heads. Many birds must become martyrs, but glorious victory is inevitable. We all know Finland is a hotbed of Islamic Fundamentalist, erm, Socialism. [And so on]
posted by BinaryApe at 7:54 AM on October 16, 2010 [1 favorite]


Oh my God I have accomplished nothing at all today. Why on earth is this so ridiculously addictive?
posted by kalimac at 1:08 PM on October 16, 2010


Just wait until there is an update for it on the app store and you jump up and down and post a facebook status update about it.
posted by morganannie at 1:36 PM on October 16, 2010


Everything about this game just tickles me to death. I love the music. And the bird sounds are perfect. Get ye behind me, haters.
posted by Splunge at 3:53 PM on October 16, 2010


I'm stuck on 3-5 and went from carefully aiming my shots at the roof of the house to randomly flinging birds at the house and reloading the level over and over again. Is there some trick to it, or did the devs just intend me to hit at exactly the right pixel? Kind of tough since the house randomly spazzes out by itself anyway. Great game otherwise.
posted by pravit at 4:27 PM on October 16, 2010


The most important thing to note is that the pigs are Swedes (have miniature flags in several scenes) - Rovio is obviously Finnish company.
posted by zeikka at 5:50 PM on October 16, 2010


Pravit - a combination of knocking out some horizontal spars to destabilize the house then aiming close to straight up so your bird goes high then plinks down on the middle of the house should do the trick. If you get really stuck there's videos online.
posted by Artw at 6:16 PM on October 16, 2010


Of course Angry Birds is a knock-off of Crush the Castle.

But it is a knock-off that does every part of the game much, much better than the original. The artwork is charming and colorful. The music is cartoony in a good way. The physics feel solid. The levels are varied and can be really challenging.

But the biggest difference is playing it on a touch screen with your finger instead of on a monitor with a mouse. Physically pulling back your slingshot with your index finger is much more satisfying than doing so with a mouse.

I love me some Angry Birds.
posted by John Smallberries at 6:56 PM on October 16, 2010


Hurhmn. I picked up Birds when I first got my phone as it was the top seller with like 20 zillion reviews and I said, well, heck, it's gotta be up there for a reason, right?

I wonder how much those top slots keep churning on just due to already being there.

I find the varying physics (the bird that turns into three, the yellow pizza box bird) enormously frustrating to control. Yes, maybe there's something to be said for very challenging levels, but I always find myself flinging one or two birds, realizing I'm not going to make it, and restarting. It's just not... casual, I guess is the word, but maybe I'm just daft at Angry Birds physics.

On the other hand, Cut the Rope which shot up out of nowhere is VERY casual, very nicely rewarding, and so far has me quite enthralled with its cute little animated bugger pointing at his mouth and pleading with me. Favorite game.
posted by cavalier at 7:05 PM on October 16, 2010


Hate Angry Birds (stuck at 1.21 or 2.21 for months now - despite walkthroughs and videos) but love me some Dark Nebula.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 1:18 AM on October 17, 2010


Well crap. Now I'm hooked too.

It's the evil avian chuckling and chortling that makes it.
posted by CunningLinguist at 1:49 PM on October 17, 2010


Angry Birds Halloween is out now on iStuff.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 10:01 AM on October 21, 2010


OK, I installed it and it's pretty fun but again I don't like playing on a little tiny screen. It would be fun as a PC game though.
posted by octothorpe at 5:13 PM on October 22, 2010




Angry Birds cake.
posted by morganannie at 8:46 AM on November 15, 2010


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