Angry Birds
THE BRIEF
We were asked by Rovio to come up with a fun and exciting way to bring the Angry Birds world to peoples' living rooms, through the magic of augmented reality.
This standalone app would become a way to help secure brand partnerships, bridging the gap between digital and physical licensed products, in addition to enabling elements of collectability and providing a way for consumers to get closer than ever to the Angry Birds characters.
THE EXPERIENCE
Our answer to the brief was Angry Birds Explore, an AR app featuring a 3D island full of Angry Birds-themed attractions, with fun mini-games, face-filters, loads of animated content, and even AR episodic content.
Some activities could only be unlocked by scanning BirdCodes, which could be found on official Angry Birds merchandise. Players could scan codes using their device's cameras, and reveal the content within.
THE DESIGN
There were 2 key layers to the experience, the 2D user interface responsible for navigation and user feedback, and the interactive 3D scene featuring the island and mini-games.
For the UI design, we created a comprehensive design system that conveyed the fun and energy you'd expect to see from an Angry Birds experience, while making sure every element was clear and easy to understand, given the young age of the app's audience.
The key element of the 3D scene was a 3D island we created with some inspiration from the island seen in The Angry Birds movie. There, players could freely explore and access all the features available. One of the most entertaining ones allowed them to visit and decorate Red's house with all kinds of objects.
We dotted points of interest around the island to help fill the space, and avoid a feeling of empty foliage or deserted island. These locations were exaggerated in scale to help them stand out, and help with discovery.
When it came to the characters, we took great care to ensure we kept the assets as faithful to the originals as possible, particularly in the animation stage. Getting each of their personality's across was really important to capture the humour of their interactions, and to give audiences what they like to see in the Angry Birds world.
THE TECH
Fully developed using ZapWorks Studio, the experience was heavily optimised to run extremely well on as many mobile devices as possible.
Load times were a concern, given the amount of games and activities available to play, so we separated the content in a way the whole experience could be loaded and updated over-the-air, keeping it fresh and easy to maintain over time.
Our internal team developed several game mechanics for each of the different activations, from time-based farming for Worm Garden, to the tower-defence strategy employed in Pig Out!, slingshot physics for Pig Shy, and many more.
THE RESULTS
With millions of downloads and plays, Angry Birds Explore was a fantastic success.
Simo Hämäläinen, Senior Vice President, Brand Licensing at Rovio Entertainment, commented: “Angry Birds Explore represents a major licensing milestone for Rovio’s Brand Licensing Unit as our vision of being able to add digital overlay to licensed products is now reality. We’ve been working diligently alongside our long-time AR partner Zappar to create a cool, always-on digital brand licensing ecosystem that not only adds value to consumers, but also helps to bridge the physical and digital worlds of Angry Birds. Licensing partners will have an incredible opportunity to create exceptional branded content experiences across our physical and digital touch points, and our consumers will be able to immerse themselves even further in the wonderful world of the Angry Birds.’’
