Christy Parrish - A Simple Guide to Dominating Angry Birds

by
Christy Parrish

LUMINIS BOOKS
Published by Luminis Books
1950 East Greyhound Pass, #18, PMB 280,
Carmel, Indiana, 46033, U.S.A.
Copyright Luminis Books, 2012

PUBLISHERS NOTICE

The Publisher and Author make no warranties or representations regarding the accuracy or completeness of this work and disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. The information contained in this guide may not be suitable for every situation, and the Publisher is not engaged in providing legal, accounting, or other professional services. Some information and links on the Internet change frequently. The Publisher is not responsible for content on third party websites referenced in this work and does not endorse any organization or information provided on such sites. Neither the Publisher nor Author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom.

Cover art direction and design by Luminis Books and Sunflower Publishing Services. Cover image courtesy of Shutterstock.

ISBN-10: 1-935462-52-0
ISBN-13: 978-1-935462-52-1
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

give you

Just the Facts

Get up to speed with dominating Angry Birdsfast!

Simple Guides: get you started quickly.

No extra clutter, no extra reading.

Learn how to get started playing Angry Birds by downloading the app, then play all the Angry Birds games, including Seasons, Magic, and Rio.

Find out the best ways to dominate Angry Birds with all the coolest tips and cheats for every leveland start having fun!

First and foremost, I would like to thank God for giving me the opportunity to do what I love.

I want to thank Chris Katsaropoulos and the rest of the team at Luminis Books for giving me the opportunity to write this book.

Personally speaking, I would like to thank my family for their love and support and for all the help that they so willingly give when Im immersed in a book. I would particularly like to thank my children, Connor and Brandon, for their enthusiasm.

Christy Parrish

Figure 1-1: Angry Birds is one of the most profitable games in history

Angry Birds is arguably the most popular mobile app in the world with more than 140 million downloads across all platforms. In fact a statistics company recently reported that approximately 200 million minutes a day are spent playing angry birds around the world. To give you some perspective, thats about the same amount of minutes that Americans spend watching prime time television each day.

What is Angry Birds? This addictive game puts you in the role of helping this bunch of flightless birds exact revenge of the evil green pigs whove stolen their eggs and hidden inside of wonky structures that are built with a variety of different types of building materials. You, as the player, launch the various birds using a basic catapult at the structures in an effort to kill all the pigs.

It sounds simple enough right? And it is. In fact, that simplicity is intentional. When Finland-based Rovio Mobile Ltd., creators of Angry Birds, set out to make a new game, they went to quite extraordinary lengths to design the most playable game they could.

The popularity of Angry Birds hasnt been seen since Pac Man. What makes Angry Birds so popular? The answer seems to be good design combined with an affordable price.

Angry Birds wasnt the first game designed by Rovio. They had designed games for other companies and created several of their own. Throughout each project they kept track of what worked and what didnt. They also had conducted several focus groups where they watched people playing games to find out what parts of the game were the most fun, what made people bored, and what made games challenging. They compiled their notes into a sort of checklist that they would use for future games.

In a nutshell, they knew they wanted a game that would meet certain requirements:

Each level had to seem possible

It had to be easy to learn

It had to be something that you could play in a short amount of time

It had to keep you challenged

It had to keep evolving with new abilities and levels to keep you coming back

They poured all this research into designing Angry Birds and it has definitely paid off. Angry Birds is a fun and engaging physics-based game in which success is based on a combination of angle, speed and trajectory. It is simple enough for a child to learn at a glance, but well-designed enough that you dont succeed based on luck. You have apply exacting aim and use the right bird in the right way.

In addition to designing a successful game engine, theyve added varying types of gameplay, multiple levels and frequent updates. All of which keeps us playing over and over again.

In 2009, when Rovio set out to create Angry Birds they were in a make or break it position. Their staff and sales were at an all-time low and they needed something that would fuel their future. The set their designers to the task of coming up with game ideas.

Figure 1-2: The Angry Birds game was designed around the angry flock of characters

The inspiration for Angry Birds came from a mock screen shot designed by Jaakko Iisalo. Iisalo created a sketch of a group of fat wingless birds with angry faces that were traveling en masse to a castle in the distance. When he showed the staff his sketch, people were drawn to the characters so they decided to build a game around the birds using the design checklist that they had developed. They chose pigs for the birds enemy because Swine Flu was so much in the news at the time.

Figure 1-3: Angry Birds is one of the most profitable games in history

A good part of the Angry Birds success has to do with timing. In the past, every phone had a different platform. This meant that you had to change the programming for each phone you wanted your game to play on. When Apple released the iPhone and the iPod touch with the same iOS platform and a single App Store to market games, they had an opportunity to create a single game with a wide audience.

Rovio released Angry Birds on the App Store in December 2009. Within months it had reached the top spot in the iOS market. In 2010, they released the game for Android, Nokia, and other smartphone markets. In 2011, the game became available on every major gaming console. They also made a game version available for PC, MAC and Chrome. With the game available on just about every platform imaginable, it has become so pervasive that you just about everyone you meet knows about the game or is already a fan.