Just why is Angry Birds so popular? It is one of those games which has really put the focus on indie developers. You can make a game like Angry Birds quite easily but what was the winning formula? Why hadn't anybody stumbled upon it before?
The Theme? Lobbing Birds at Pigs who have their eggs. Not sure that this was the appeal really. If someone said to me in a bar "have you heard about that new game where you chuck frowning birds at oinking green pigs?" I'm not sure I would have been motivated to keep tabs on it.
The fact is Angry Birds was immensely successful on devices with touchscreen input. As far as this goes the game is excellent, you can control the trajectory and power of the bird with relative ease and quite quickly it feels like a game of skill. Everyone thinks they are ace at lobbing things through the air onto/into something else. I literally spend many hours of my working week throwing balls of paper into the waste bin. It would be a serious waste of time if I weren't so good at it. This is what Rovio have managed to capture, the artistry of chucking things in the bin. On top of that you can play it for thirteen seconds and turn it off and not lose anything which is the essence of mobile gaming - occupying micro-moments. A reworking of a Zelda game would be a complete waste of time on a phone. If you have to play any longer than two seconds without a save point then you are looking at a recipe for complete failure. I haven't completed Angry Birds and feel no motivation to do so. In fact if I had completed it what would I do whilst I'm on the bog thinking about what to think about while I'm on the bog?
That's it really, you can call it the mechanic but really I think its that the touchscreen is the perfect input device for that mechanic. After that it is well executed. Well done Rovio.
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