That is something that has remained at the core of mobile gaming - these intuitive, instantly engaging game experiences.”Īngry Birds was released in December 2009, a release date that sets it just barely outside of this decade, but we can’t ignore its influence over the past 10 years. “ Angry Birds really embraced the touch-based nature of new smart devices and presented players with bite-sized gameplay experiences that could be picked up easily. “At the time of Angry Bird’s release, developers were still exploring what kind of games would suit the mobile platform,” Rovio chief marketing officer Ville Heijari told Polygon. Before there was Untitled Goose Game’s mischievous goose, wingless birds were the devious ones. Plus, it had a slapstick humor that appealed to a wide audience. The tactile feel - launching a bird by dragging and aiming a finger back as if the player was operating a slingshot - made it easy to play and hard to master, with levels scaling up as players made progress. Angry Birds got to smartphones first with its flashy, fun iteration on Crush the Castle, and the iconic birds stuck.Īngry Birds just worked on the iPhone, thanks to easy controls. It’s visuals were lacking, though it was bland and dark, with a generic medieval aesthetic. Crush the Castle made its iOS debut in 2010, after Angry Birds, but despite delivering on a unique idea - the flinging mechanic, with its precise, tactile controls. Smartphones were still new technology, and game makers were figuring out how to create for touchscreens and cater to an audience eager software that showcased their expensive new investments. Eight months later, Finnish developer Rovio Entertainment released the birds-vs-pigs game - a similar premise to Crush the Castle, wherein birds fling themselves at increasingly complex structures, knocking out pigs in the process.

It came out in April 2009 to little fan-fare. Crush the Castle is a physics-based Flash game from Armor Games, where players fling rocks at ramshackle castles on the brink of tipping over.

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