Rovio Entertainment Announces Development of New AR App Set to Link Licensed Products to Digital Angry Birds Universe
Users to experience fully customizable world that mixes digital and physical licensed products
State-of-the-art technology to deliver rich AR experience for brands, retailers and consumers
ESPOO, Finland – Oct. 8, 2018 – Rovio Entertainment is thrilled to announce the development of a revolutionary new augmented reality (AR) app that is set to seamlessly connect Rovio licensed products with the digital Angry Birds universe.
The new app in the pipeline, codenamed ‘Project Magic,’ will transport consumers into a breathtaking new world, allowing them to engage in highly immersive branded content experiences that bridge the gap between digital and physical licensed products. With an official release date set in 2019, Project Magic’s new ecosystem will be the latest milestone in Rovio’s ever-expanding brand licensing roadmap, which has already seen them working with some of the world’s largest brands and IPs.
Project Magic will enable Angry Birds fans to travel through an augmented reality portal straight onto Bird Island – the home of the Angry Birds. App users will be able to explore Bird Island and discover various exciting, high-production-value AR locations and experiences. Project Magic will utilize augmented reality to enrich user interaction with promotional and licensing partners’ products and locations, mixing the boundaries between the digital and the physical worlds.
Simo Hämäläinen, Senior Vice President, Brand Licensing at Rovio Entertainment, commented: “Project Magic 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.’’
Rovio is currently developing Project Magic alongside renowned augmented reality specialists Zappar. This state-of-the-art augmented reality platform will build on the successes of Rovio and Zappar’s previous collaboration within AR, which was created for The Angry Birds Movie launch back in 2016.
Max Dawes, Partnerships & Marketing Director at Zappar, commented: ‘’Over the past seven years working in the augmented reality space we’ve learnt a lot about how companies can create value with AR. We’re beyond excited to be able to leverage those learnings on such a huge scale with the fantastic team at Rovio. A brand’s largest owned media channels are their products, their packaging and their stores; through the addition of interactive Angry Birds content, these channels can surprise, delight and entertain consumers like never before. In addition, Rovio’s partners will see hard data on when and how consumers are interacting. We can’t wait to unleash the magic!’’
Rovio is also developing a long-term and diverse platform of entertainment touch points for its passionate global audience. A brand new long-form animation is planned for 2020. Other flagship projects include brand-new live stage shows, new animated and live action content for Rovio’s Angry Birds YouTube channel, and new location-based entertainment initiatives. The planned 2019 theatrical release of The Angry Birds Movie 2 is swiftly followed by the landmark 10th anniversary of the original Angry Birds in December 2019. To date, the Angry Birds family of games have amassed over four billion downloads since 2009. Throughout 2018, Rovio will continue its games event and partnership program, developing bespoke in-game content for new brand partners. Some previous partnerships include Imagine Dragons, the NFL/Super Bowl, Iron Maiden and Everton Football Club.
Rovio at BLE 2018:
Should you wish to hear more and have a chat with Rovio – come and meet us at Brand Licensing Expo in London on October 9-11! Rovio booth number F10.
ABOUT ROVIO ENTERTAINMENT
Rovio Entertainment Corporation is a global entertainment company that creates, develops and publishes mobile games, which have been downloaded over 4 billion times. The Company is best known for the global Angry Birds brand, which started as a popular mobile game in 2009, and has since evolved from games to various entertainment and consumer products in brand licensing. Today, the Company offers multiple mobile games, animations and has produced The Angry Birds Movie, which opened number one in theatres in 50 countries and the sequel of which is in production. Rovio is headquartered in Finland and the Company’s shares are listed on the main list of the NASDAQ Helsinki stock exchange with the trading code ROVIO. (www.rovio.com)
ABOUT ZAPPAR
Zappar have been blazing a trail in augmented reality since way back in 2011. Founded by seasoned marketing and video game execs and alumni of Cambridge University, the Zappar team is now made up of 50 people across their London headquarters and offices in San Francisco, Boston and Sydney.
Zappar describe themselves as an augmented reality platform and a creative studio, rolled into one. Their platform is called ZapWorks and is empowering thousands of designers and developers around the world to create and instantly publish immersive and engaging AR content. Agencies and in-house teams use ZapWorks’s unrivalled feature-set to bring to life everything from marketing campaigns to learning and development materials. Zappar’s own in-house team have delivered against AR strategies for hundreds of clients, with thousands of activations. An example of this is the recent introduction of AR to the 7-Eleven app and all their North American stores as part of an always on strategy. Or Nestle who are adopting augmented reality at a global level to turn product packaging into interactive multimedia portals and leverage their packaging as their largest owned media asset. Zappar’s underlying mission is to democratise AR and get it into the hands and lives of as many people of possible, unlocking value for businesses and end-users alike.
Gameplay
Visuals
Audio
Overall
Kukri has managed to open up his own special pocket dimension and thanks to this, the girls have all been trapped and dressed in strange outfits with the only escape being to beat down Kukri and free themselves before his twisted dream of making the entire world his playground comes true. As mentioned before players will select two characters who will then battle through a number of standard fights, viewing a few Kukri based cutscenes in between, before facing off against the big bad and vanquishing him.
Despite its superficial nature players can still find plenty of ways to string together powerful attack strings by mixing up their light attacks into specials or, with the use of tagging in your partner and using items, triggering lengthy combos that will devastate your foe but don’t expect too much of this complexity to really come into play unless you want to take your skills and test them against others in multiplayer.
Players have their standard health gauge as well as a Spirit Gauge that is required to use special moves and unleash a Dream Finisher but the game happens to balance these in an interesting way. The lower your health gauge gets, the bigger your spirit gauge can grow and vice versa, allowing for a potential comeback if you happen to be doing poorly. Both characters on any given side share the same health pool though swapping out midfight is useful as they do not share Spirit Gauges and can often be brought in to defeat a foe for good. It is worth noting that completely dropping an opponent’s health will leave them in a stunned state that allows for an easy Dream Finisher so don’t expect a one sided battle to easily be turned around despite how tense some final fights can end up being thanks to this system.
As far as the soundtrack goes, the background music is a bit standard for a fighting game, even a less serious one such as this. The voice acting is entirely in Japanese and is handled very well, even in Terry’s genderbent case, and there are even voice options to purchase for each of the girls as well.
Players are initially given three chests filled with a decent amount of supplies in the form of extra firearms, medkits, bandages that can be used to heal the technician, ammo, and wall repair kits that are essential for keeping most of the undead at bay. There are a number of walls that players can, generally, shoot through to deal damage to the undead from a safe distance but it is worth noting that these walls can be taken down quite easily if a number of undead are left unchecked. Unfortunately, while repetition will give players the ability to easily tell exactly how much health a wall has, players must simply use a color coded warning symbol to determine when a wall needs repair rather than use actual health meters that would have been far better and avoided the potential waste of limited wall repair kits.
This is essential since while things may start a bit easy with only easy to kill bloaters and standard zombies appearing in initial rounds later rounds will continue to add tougher foes in the form of Ferals that will simply climb over walls to directly attack the technician, Juggernauts that take a massive amount of damage to take down and can easily breach walls, and even “new” Blood Plague Juggernauts that can leave clouds of infection in their wake. Basic blood plague zombies will also appear and just like in the core game, if you end up getting too infected then death will come swiftly.
Repetition quickly becomes the only way to really grind your way through waves and eventually unlock equipment that will make your life easier and make things better for the standard game. It doesn’t help that death is almost a certainty for the most part, even if you manage to stay connected to other players online in a multiplayer match since lag can be a real problem that will see zombies teleporting around and breaking through barriers that were previously pristine or simply disconnecting entirely. Playing offline allows players to avoid the laggy nature that can plague online matches but also robs players of the more enjoyable experiences of working together as a team.
The soundtrack doesn’t really offer anything new as well other than the same standard tones and sound effects from the zombie horde. The new voice work for the random soldiers as well as the technician are fitting for the game but don’t stand out in any special way.