I Played All 17 Angry Birds Games And I Have Some Thoughts

There are 17 Angry Bird games available to download and play on your mobile device. I decided to download all of them and play them in chronological order of release and document my journey and maybe learn something.

Actually, there are more games. You see some Angry Birds games got kicked out of the nest and didn’t survive. Angry Birds Fight, Angry Birds Action and Angry Birds Stella have all been removed from app stores. I could technically find an APK and install these dead games, but I’m already playing 17 Angry Birds games. I don’t need to hunt down more.

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And yet, there are a few more games beyond the 17 I’m playing for this article. Angry Birds Champions and Angry Birds Blast Island were soft launched last year and are not available to me. Maybe if they are released officially in the future I’ll download them and update this post. For now, I’m skipping them. But for those keeping score at home, that is 22 Angry Birds games.

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Did you realize they’ve made 22 Angry Birds games? We all learned something today.

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Angry Birds - (Dec. 2009)

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The classic bird flinging game that started it all. Odds are you’ve played Angry Birds, but a quick explanation of how the game works: You fling birds at pigs, who stole your eggs. Your goal is to kill all the pigs using the least amount of birds. At the end of each level you are awarded some stars and a score.

This game is over 9 years old and yet Rovio Entertainment is still updating it. That’s dedication. I also love the idea of Angry Birds fans who won’t move on. They will only play the original game. “I ain’t leaving my birds!”

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Because of all these updates the game still looks nice and runs fine on newer phones.

2 out of 3 gold stars

Angry Birds Seasons (Oct. 2010)

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Hey, did you like Angry Birds? Did you also play that first game and think “I really wish this game had more holiday content!”? Well Angry Birds Seasons is here to satisfy your holiday and seasonal theme fetish. Now you can fling birds at green piggies during Winter, Fall, Spring or Summer!

I don’t really love Angry Birds enough to need the same game with some new levels and some snow, so I moved on from Seasons quickly.

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1 out of 3 gold stars

Angry Birds Rio (March 2011)

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Maybe some folks want to badly fling birds, but love pigs too much? The idea of hurting a pig, even an egg stealing pig, is thought these players can’t stomach. Angry Birds Rio is here to save the day! This game replaces the pigs with monkeys. Personally, I’m more a monkey fan than a pig fan, but to each their own.

This installment of the franchise is based on the animated film Rio and its 2014 sequel. Do you remember these films? I wonder how many kids playing Rio, which is still getting updates, even know that this game is based on a film. There is a real chance that Angry Birds Rio is the most popular part of the Rio franchise.

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2 out of 3 gold stars

Angry Birds Friends (Feb. 2012)

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Hey, so I want to let you know now that Rovio has made this bird flinging game a lot. Like a lot of these games are the original game with a few changes or twists. Friends is essentially Seasons, but now with more Facebook integration. So I might not spend a bunch of time or words with every game in the franchise. I hope that doesn’t anger anyone.

Friends does add a lot more power-ups to the basic gameplay. These can also be bought for real money, which seems unfair. I want to meet the folks who spent a lot of money on this game to beat their best friends at Angry Birds. “No way Jerry! Your score is going to get destroyed, once I buy this bomb blast!”

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1 out of 3 gold stars

Angry Birds Space (March 2012)

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A month after the release of Friends, Rovio gave the world Angry Birds Space. Surprisingly, Space shakes the gameplay of Angry Birds up quite a bit! The game uses small planets and other celestial objects to create levels where players have to use gravity to bend birds around to hit pigs.

There is also some sort of galaxy of levels based on a Fruit Loops cereal called Bloopers. Checking out reviews, folks seem to really like Bloopers! At this point it seems like any bird related IP is a perfect fit for Angry Birds.

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One other thing I like about Space is that each level has different facts about outer space. So as you kill piggies by freezing them in the cold vacuum of space, you can find out some facts about Venus.

2 out of 3 gold stars


Bad Piggies (Sep. 2012)

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The birds in Angry Birds take a back seat in this spin off game that focuses on the green pigs. The gameplay in Bad Piggies is totally different than any of the previous games. You are given different components, like wheels or boxes. Using these parts, players create contraptions and vehicles that pigs can operate to finish different levels.

After playing 5 very similar games, Bad Piggies felt like a huge breath of fresh air. When Bad Piggies was first released I actually played through over half of this game over the course of a few weeks. Coming back to it I was happy to find that it’s still a fun little puzzle game.

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This game seems to imply that the birds are complete morons. They just throw themselves at the pigs and their piggy buildings. Meanwhile, the intelligent pigs are building and creating complex machines and solving difficult puzzles. This actually fits right into the lore of the earlier games, where the pigs have elaborate bases the birds have to destroy. Who would have thought this franchise would have smart world building?

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3 out 3 gold stars

Angry Birds Star Wars (Nov. 2012)

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The birds are now in a galaxy far, far away. This entry in the franchise isn’t as innovative as Bad Piggies, but it does combine the classic levels from earlier games with the gravity bending levels from Angry Birds Space.

This is also the point where the franchise starts forcing more ads into the games. Star Wars has lots of micro-transactions and asks players to watch ads to earn more rewards constantly. I love Star Wars and after a few levels I bounced off this game faster than even Seasons!

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1 out of 3 gold stars


Angry Birds Star Wars II (Sep. 2013)

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Hey, it’s more Angry Birds in Star Wars, except now the Star Wars films they are referencing are the Prequels! Are you excited? Even worse the very first thing the game made me do was decide if I wanted to watch an ad to earn a bonus. I didn’t even play the game and it asked me to watch an ad. Gross.

Oh, considering this is the last Star Wars related Angry Birds game in the franchise, this is the last chance I’ll have to mention that before Disney bought Star Wars the first Angry Birds Star Wars game was something that higher-ups at Lucasfilm thought would save the franchise. It was dark times for Star Wars back then.

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1 out 3 gold stars

Angry Birds GO! (Dec. 2013)

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The birds have tired of just flinging themselves at pigs and are now ready to do some racing. I wasn’t expecting much from GO, but I was shocked at how good this kart racer looked and played. The 3D art looks clean and colorful and the gameplay is smooth and simple. You don’t control acceleration or braking. Instead you steer left or right and the momentum from flinging your bird at the start keeps you moving forward.

Does this being part of the Angry Birds franchise really make sense or help the game in any way? Not really, but I’m guessing this game had a lot more eyeballs on it because it had the Angry Birds name slapped on it. This game doesn’t even have a ton of ads in it! I might actually play more of this when I’m down with this silly journey through the Angry Birds franchise.

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This game also includes, like all the other games, the same three star rating system. These poor birds need to stop judging themselves so much. Live your life you mad birds. Don’t always strive to earn more stars. You can be more than just a rating.

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3 out 3 gold stars

Angry Birds EPIC (June 2014)

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The Angry Birds characters you know and maybe love are now in a big turn based RPG. Their enemies are the pigs, who have once again stolen the birds’ eggs. These birds might be stupid, but the pigs are just big jerks.

The gameplay of EPIC is fairly simple and lacks any real depth, but the colorful art and nice looking cut scenes help elevate this above a lot of other turn based RPGs on the app store. Again, I’m not sure making this Angry Birds related was necessary, but I also don’t know why I’m even doing this. Life is confusing and we just have to deal with it.

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2 out of 3 gold stars

Angry Birds Transformers (October 2014)

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I don’t know who decided that small birds and pigs should be mixed up with transforming robots from outer space, but regardless in 2014 the world was treated to Angry Birds Transformers.

Unlike Star Wars or Rio, this licensed Angry Birds game really changes up how the game plays. It also gives the birds legs and arms, which I’m not sure is a good thing.

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Transformers looks like a third person shooter, but actually plays like a strange puzzle game. Players have to use their lasers to strategically destroy different pig structures, crushing the pigs in the process. Though you only have a few seconds to aim and shoot before your bird-former runs too far away and the pig survives.

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This could have been a simple re-skin of the old Angry Birds formula, but instead it feels like something different. It even ditches the gold star rating system! I won’t ditch my rating system, but I’m happy the birds got a break from it.

3 out of 3 gold stars

Angry Birds Pop! (March 2015)

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There are easily a thousand bubble popping games on the various app stores. Pop is another one of these games, but now with Angry Birds. Not a bad game, but also at this point I’m exhausted and just want a break.

2 out of 3 gold stars

Angry Birds 2 (July 2015)

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Finally, after years of waiting fans were treated to the true follow-up to Angry Birds. The 12th game in the franchise at this point, counting the cancelled Fight spin off game, Angry Birds 2 is a true evolution of the gameplay that was found in the first game.

Okay, not really, but you can now choose which bird to use and you can even unlock new birds in any order you want.

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It also has a new art style and some neat 3D elements, like how dead pigs fly at your screen. I really love the fast forward button included in Angry Birds 2. Something that happens way too often in these games is you fling a bird and then wait for what feels like at least a solid minute as your bird keeps rolling or a piece of debris slowly slides down a hill. Now you can just hit that fast forward button and skip the wait. I wish this article had a fast forward button!

3 out of 3 gold stars

Angry Birds Blast (Dec. 2016)

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I actually forgot to download this game and as I was double checking my notes for this piece I realized my mistake. I was angry. This has probably negatively colored my thoughts on Blast.

Fuck this game. All you do is pop colored tiles and free birds. This type of game is everywhere on the app store. But finally, I can play it with my favorite multi-colored birds. I love these birds and how angry they are! I’m so happy we have this franchise!

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1 out of 3 gold stars

Angry Birds Evolution (June 2017)

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One redeeming feature found in most of these games is the colorful and cute art. Even when I’m just playing a bubble popper clone, the art is enough to distract me from how awful an idea this was. Evolution decided to ditch that fun art style and go for something a bit more...awful. The visuals in Evolution are just ugly and seem to be causing my phone to get hot from playing after 10 minutes. Which is not a great feature.

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I also am about 80% sure that Chuck, the yellow bird, is high in Angry Birds Evolution. Maybe I’m just seeing things after spending hours playing Angry Birds games, but that bird looks like he is feeling very good. Very good. The actual gameplay sucks and is some weird mix of flinging birds and top down RPG mechanics. It ain’t great, folks.

1 out of 3 gold stars

Angry Birds Match (Aug. 2017)

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Fuck it. That’s the feeling I get from Match. The entire game just feels like nobody really spent much time on it. Looking at a screenshot of this game, it is almost impossible to tell I’m playing an Angry Birds game.

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I was also surprised to see it took them this long and this many games to finally make a traditional match-3. I still hate it, but it is curious.

If you’ve played a match-3 game, you’ve played a better game than Angry Birds Match. There seems to be nothing new added to the classic formula, besides some birds. And honestly, I’m getting sick of these dumb birds.

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1 out of 3 gold stars

Angry Birds Dream Blast (Sep. 2018)

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Do you know where the idea for Angry Birds came from? When the game was being created in early 2009, the swine flu epidemic was happening. So Rovio decided to include green, sick looking pigs into the game. Now nearly a decade later and after hundreds of millions of downloads, one of the most popular mobile game series of all time has enemies inspired by a deadly outbreak of a disease. It seems fitting, really.

Dream Blast is another game where players pop things that are the same color, but you don’t care. After reading over 2000 words about 17 Angry Birds games, I can’t blame you.

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1 out of 3 gold stars


So what did I learn after playing all these games? The core gameplay is still satisfying. Even if I’ve done it before, watching a tower of pigs crumble from one perfectly aimed hit still feels good. I don’t think I needed to play the same game like 8 times, but here we are. I also was surprised at how varied some of the spin offs felt. That kart racing game, GO, was a lot of fun and once I can stand to look at a bird again, I might play it some more.

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Would I recommend you play all the Angry Birds games?

No.

If you are wanting to go back and try one I’d say either go with Angry Birds 2 or try one of the fun spin offs, like the Transformers game.

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If you made it all the way down here, I applaud you. I’m also deeply sorry. I’ll leave you with this quote from the Angry Birds film:

Pluck my life.

-Red, The Angry Birds Movie, 2016