Rovio launches Angry Birds spin-off Bad Piggies today

One of the biggest names in the mobile games industry is Rovio, popular for the Angry Birds series of games. Rovio’s next game is all set to be launched later today. The company had released a trailer for the upcoming Angry Birds spin-off, titled Bad Piggies, a few days ago. The trailer answers the biggest question about the game on everybody’s mind – What is it going to be?

The trailer gives the impression that the game is a cross between Amazing Alex and Rigonauts, with Rube Goldberg machines and vehicles based around them. The game allows you to be creative with building a vehicle to traverse the environment, and gives you options to make either straightforward land-based vehicles with four wheels or a full-blown biplane that will let you fly.

Earlier this month, Rovio had released a comic for Bad Piggies that attempts to explain the story in the game, though not many people play the Angry Birds games for its deep and intricate plotline. The game was announced in the beginning of this month.

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

Speaking at the announcement of Bad Piggies, Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio said, “There’s a lot of empathy towards the lovable enemies from the Angry Birds games, and we’ve been constantly asked: what about the pigs’ side of the story? Bad Piggies gives you the chance to play as the second-most-loved characters in the Angry Birds universe, and explore this rich world through their green eyes.”

The game will be launched for iOS, Android and Mac later today, while versions for Windows Phone, Windows 8 and PC will follow shortly thereafter.

Go on a murderous rampage against the birds or build intricate contraptions instead

“We’ve had a lot of fun creating a totally new and unique gameplay experience,” said Petri Järvilehto, EVP Games at Rovio. “There’s so much more to these pigs than what is seen in the Angry Birds games, and Bad Piggies is the first glimpse into what’s going on in the imaginative and ingenious minds of the pigs.”

The Angry Birds series has been undeniably successful. Starting with its debut on iOS devices and eventual ports into other platforms, the franchise has proved extremely popular. At one point, the Playstation 3 version of Angry Birds even became the best selling game on PSN. The company announced one billion downloads for Angry Birds in May. The download count, however, includes all platforms and all the Angry Birds games that Rovio has made, which are: Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio and Angry Birds Space, as well as the free, light versions of the games.

Rovio has seen massive success with the series. The first game debuted for iOS devices in 2009 for $0.99, with the Android release shortly after, which was free and ad-supported. When the game was in development, the folks at Rovio liked the idea of building wingless and legless birds. To choose an enemy for the birds, they thought pigs were appropriate as the swine flu epidemic was in the news at the time. Rovio partnered with Chillingo to publish the first Angry Birds app to the iOS App Store. After that, Rovio self-published all its Angry Birds titles with the exception of the PlayStation Portable version of the game, which was published under the production of Abstraction Games and distributed by Chillingo.