After countless updates, ports, and spin-offs, Rovio’s landmark mobile hit Angry Birds will at last see a true sequel released later this month, the studio confirmed in a recent teaser video.
Few details regarding Angry Birds 2 are known, though the teaser hints that gameplay will feature the same pig-bopping, crate-busting gameplay of its physics-driven forebears.
Originally released in 2009, Angry Birds took the iOS App Store by storm, selling 12 million copies in the year after its launch. The game spawned a singular empire on iOS devices, with the core app and spinoff Angry Birds Seasons topping platform sales charts for many consecutive months. Finnish developer Rovio supported both apps with frequent content-expanding updates, keeping its franchise at the forefront of the App Store marketplace.
Angry Birds saw its first licensed release in 2011 with Angry Birds Rio, a popular puzzler based on an animated film. Follow-ups like Angry Birds Star Wars and Angry Birds Transformers continued the trend in recent years.
Developer Rovio later explored new genres with apps like 2013’s racing game Angry Birds Go! and 2014’s turn-based RPG Angry Birds Epic. The 2012 spinoff Bad Piggies inverted the series’ traditional structure, challenging players to build vehicles that ensure safe passage for the Angry Birds’ pig antagonists.
Angry Birds entered the console realm with 2012’s Angry Birds Trilogy, a compilation featuring a trio of previously released apps. Angry Birds Star Wars later premiered as a launch title for the PlayStation 4 in North America in 2013.
Fan speculation suggests that Angry Birds 2 is a retitled version of Angry Birds Under Pigstruction, which soft-launched in Canada earlier this year. Under Pigstruction seems to feature the same cast of characters seen in early promotional images for Angry Birds 2, hinting at a possible rebranding. Under Pigstruction‘s Wikipedia page has already been updated to indicate that it is in fact Angry Birds 2, which seems to verify the theory. That game utilized essentially the same bird-launching gameplay as previous titles, with the addition of a new silver bird and spells like summoning blizzards or a rain of rubber ducks.
Angry Birds 2 will premiere for Android and iOS mobile platforms on July 30.
