Angry Birds Transformers (mobile game)
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| Developer | Rovio | ||||||
| Publisher | Rovio Mobile | ||||||
| Platforms | Apple iOS 7+ (iPad, iPhone) Android | ||||||
| Release date | October 15, 2014 (iOS) October 30, 2014 (Android) | ||||||
Angry Birds Transformers is a mobile app for both iPhone and Android platforms developed and published by Rovio. It is a themed version of the developer's mega-popular mobile game Angry Birds.
Synopsis
The Allspark Egg has landed on Piggy Island, transforming its dueling inhabitants and giving them bodies and powers based on the Transformers: the birds of the Flock become Autobirds and the Bad Piggies the Deceptihogs. The two sides briefly continue their struggle with these new powers until they are both threatened by another transformed group, the Eggbots, who seek to transform all of Piggy Island into metal, backed by countless roboticized Minion Pigs.
Most of the Autobirds and all of the Deceptichogs are captured leaving only Red (who has the powers of Optimus Prime) and Chuck (with the powers of Bumblebee) free. The two head out to free the Autobirds and Deceptihogs, because only by joining forces can they restore Piggy Island to normal!
Gameplay
The game is a deviation from the normal Angry Birds formula, but the core goal, toppling block towers to pop the Bad Piggies on them, is the same.
Once you select an available stage from the map of Piggie Island, your chosen character runs along the foreground at a set speed, as block towers scroll by in the background. By tapping the screen, your character takes aim and fires their weapon. Glass blocks are very weak, Wood blocks fairly sturdy but easily moved, and Stone blocks are both hard to break and shove. The trick is to quickly determine which blocks in the structure are best to destroy/shove to cause a domino effect, toppling them and popping the Piggies by dropping blocks on them or making them fall far enough. (Remember, weaker blocks are not always the best target!) The more destruction you cause, the more Coins you get to buy upgrades and explore new areas. Each level has a set length; you do not have to pop every Piggie to pass, merely survive to the end.
"Survive"? Yeah. Some Piggies are weaponized and will begin to attack shortly after appearing on-screen. Thus, popping these Piggies quickly becomes essential. You can also try to escape attacks and falling giant stone statues by transforming to vehicle mode. This speeds you along a bit, but removes your ability to attack, plus you can only maintain vehicle mode for a limited time. Attacking automatically transforms you back to robot mode. There are other obstacles that can decrease a character's health bar; lose all your life and the character is taken out of the game for a time, but they will eventually return. Whlie you will not earn Piggie points for the level, you do keep any Coins you collected. Health does not restore between levels, so if a character is low you must spend Coins to repair them, which also takes them out of the game for a while, but not as long as defeat does. This time-out is in real-time, even when the game is off, but you can spend earned Crystals or scan a figure with a Telepod to make the repairs instantaneous.
Cleared stages will slowly earn Coins over real-time. Tapping on the Coins adds them to your bank. There are also occasional treasure chests on the map, tap them to earn more Crystals. However, Eggbots will attempt to re-cyberform cleared stages, which removes their Coin bonuses. You can see which stages they are working on, how long the cyberforming process will take, and even speed up their work (at the cost of Crystals). This too goes on in real-time. Once a stage is re-cyberformed, it can be played again.
Character choices
Every stage has a pre-set character you control, based on who you've rescued so far. Every character has a different style of attack, movement speed, and armor rating, as well as an unlockable secondary move (which must be fueled first by blasting a cyberformed piece of scenery to return it to normal, which is not always as easy as it sounds). Working out the strengths and weaknesses of each character is key to high scores, and in some cases simple survival. (See each characters' individual page for a breakdown of their abilities.)
New characters can be added to your roster in two different ways. In-game, each character is held captive in a block of ice, and you must "spend" a specific number of popped Piggies to break them out. You then have to play a short level with that character, and if they make it to the end, they're yours to keep. If not, they are re-frozen, but thankfully you can try again without having to spend all those hard-earned Piggy points again.
Out-of-game, this is where you spend actual-factual money, on the tie-in toys. By placing one of the figures on a Telepod and placing that on your device's camera lens, the game reads the code on the figure and inserts it into the game. Some variant characters can only be obtained via Telepod. You can also use this method to power-up already-unlocked characters before a stage or speed up their repairs without spending Crystals.
Every character can be upgraded multiple times by spending Coins, which (of course) takes them out of play for a while. Ech upgrade is pre-set, increasing attack strength, armor strength, or vehicle mode duration. At certain levels, new abilities are unlocked. You can spend much-rarer Crystals to make the upgrade happen instantly; the closer the upgrades are to complete, the less Crystals you need to spend. Upgrading characters is vital as the levels get harder and harder. You can only have one character undergoing upgrades at a time, though, which tempts you to spend those Crystals....
Soon you get the option to have a second character on standby, who you can call in and have the computer control for a brief period. They enter the stage with a slo-mo that does heavy damage to most of the blocks and Piggies on-screen. However, there's a limit to when you are able to call in a partner; once you see your transpot fly overhead, your partner's no longer available. On the other hand, the stage is close to over! You get to see your partner before you start the stage, and if you don't like that character choice, you can change it by spending some Coins. Partners are either randomly generated, or pulled from the character rosters of your friends if you've connected to the game via Facebook or Google+ or iTunes or whatever the social network stuff the kids are into these days is.
Ads and upsells
It's a free game, so how does Rovio make its money? By copious amounts of ads (largely for other games) and by enticing you to spend real currency on in-game currency.
The ads can actually have a gameplay effect, in a disturbingly clever move. After completing a stage, you are given the option to watch a short video ad; doing so doubles your end-of-stage rewards. When chosing a partner for a stage, you will also get a prompt to watch an ad; doing so gives your partner a one-stage stat boost and ups the amount of time they can stay in-play. However, you can only watch so many ads within a set amount of time, so choose which bonuses you go for wisely. And of course, sometimes ads will just pop up anyway.
Spending real monies allows you to buy large numbers of Crystals, which are used to speed up character upgrades and repairs. Given that those can take literal hours to finish, leaving you with no stages available to play til the required characters are back in commission, it gets tempting to drop some coin.
Of course, you can get the same effects with a Telepod-activated figure... which also costs real monies.
Featured characters
| Autobirds | Deceptihogs |
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Notes
References
This game is loaded with tiny jokes and references to Transformers lore.
- The character designs pull from a broad mix of generations. While (obviously) Generation 1 gets the most representation, there are also elements from:
- The live-action movies: Bumblebee and Lockdown's designs, Optimus and Galvatron's truck modes
- Rescue Bots: Heatwave
- War for Cybertron: Soundwave's altmode
- The initial loading screen has numerous nods:
- "Rhyming with Wheelie"
- "Targeting 2006"
External links
