The Finnish company continues to experiment with game mechanics. The new game under the Angry Birds brand, whose “soft” launch will take place on March 16, will be a turn-based role-playing game.
Everyone has been tired of the original Angry Birds mechanics for a long time. It seems that throwing birds at pigs (or pigs at birds, as in last year’s Angry Birds Star Wars II) has become boring for Finns for almost five years in a row. Although, of course, this was not the main reason for the frequent experiments with the mechanics of games under the bird IP. Almost no one can afford to make money on the mobile market on “games for a buck” today.
Rovio has been trying to diversify its gaming business since 2012. The company understood that the popularity of the game itself (and not the brand, which at that time had already successfully grown to an international scale) was melting, and at the same time, both the game IP and the company’s name needed to be fueled by new successful releases that meet the requirements of the time.
Amazing Alex is a slightly upgraded Casey’s Contraptions (read about the history of the deal here)However, the first attempt to get out of the classic Angry Birds was the morally obsolete at the time of release in 2012, the paid puzzle Amazing Alex and never became a bestseller Bad Piggies.
A year later, they were followed by the time-manger The Croods, created based on the cartoon of the same name from DreamWorks. Apparently, Rovio planned to repeat the Ice Age Village scenario implemented by Gameloft (the project, released in early 2012, still brings profit to the French company). But The Croods did not last long in the American box office top. The game quickly slipped to the bottom. As a result, her support was completely abandoned after October 2013.
With this, Rovio finished trying to create original titles and focused on the development of new free-to-play games under the Angry Birds brand.
The Croods (our first impressions of the game can be read here)Going back a bit.
In fact, Rovio raised the topic of full-fledged free-to-play for the first time not in the “Croods Family”, but back in February 2012, releasing Angry Birds Friends on Facebook. A year later, the project appeared on mobile platforms. The game, judging by App Annie data, shows stable results in the American and European markets of the year, jumping within the box office top 200 – top 300.
The indicators of the Angry Birds racing arcade game Angry Birds Go!, released by Rovio in December last year, which is much bolder in the interpretation of the Angry Birds franchise, turned out to be much higher. The game was in the box office top 100 of the American App Store until last February. Now she has flown out of it, which is quite possibly due to quite rare and minor updates of the game (usually once a month).
And now, apparently, against the background of the success of Angry Birds Go!, the Finns are already planning to release another bold release for themselves this week – Angry Birds Epic, a role-playing game in the universe of the same name.
The game will feature a turn-based combat system similar in spirit to Japanese RPGs, heroes with growing characteristics, as well as a full-fledged crafting system that allows you to create weapons, armor and potions.
You will be able to download the game on March 14 from the Canadian and Australian App Store.