Angry Birds Journey

Angry Birds Journey (previously Angry Birds Casual) is an upcoming slingshot puzzle game developed by Rovio Entertainment. It is the nineteenth game in the expanded mainline series, and the eleventh mobile game to use the slingshot gameplay style. Despite this, the game bases itself on the more recent tile-matching games, such as Angry Birds Match and Angry Birds Dream Blast. The birds act more like moves to the player, with the characters being provided in a random sequence. In addition to pigs, the birds' goal is now to free encaged hatchlings, who sometimes have missions tied to them (getting their containers to the bottom of the stage or to the top), and levels are not replayable, thus meaning that the stars are removed. The game also uses the art style of Angry Birds Dream Blast, but features them without limbs (akin to the original designs) in-game.

History
Journey was soft-launched as Angry Birds Casual in the US, Finland, Poland and Sweden on Apple's App Store in March of 2020. It was pulled from the App Store in December of that year, due to the game getting rebranded as Angry Birds Journey, which would release in the same set of regions, along with Denmark and Canada, on January 14th, 2021. The new version of the game was set in a different, more tribal location, featured more pigs in the levels, and introduced the plot of a Minion Pig stealing an ancient egg that Red had found. On December 9th, 2021, it was confirmed on the official Angry Birds Facebook pages that the game would be made available worldwide soon.

Gameplay
The game is a slingshot game, in which the players have to drag the rubber of the slingshot with the bird and aim it at the target, which are Caged Hatchlings. There are various unlockable characters and are again in "cute" style, and they have their original abilities (except for Red). There are sections for each level just like in Angry Birds 2. Each level has quests, like the Match games, such as freeing Hatchlings on jam, etc. The game is based off of a lot of Angry Birds Dream Blast features and graphics. The birds now have abilities that activate on contact with touching blocks these and cannot be activated by tapping. There is also an Anger Meter that fills up by breaking blocks which, once filled, will make the next bird bigger and stronger when the player uses the Anger Meter ability. In each level, there are "Moves," which are flings of the slingshot. Each fling costs one move. Each move gives a random bird, and if you run out of moves, you lose the level. You have to pay 950 coins if you run out of birds. There is the Sun Bar, where you fill it with Sun Tokens to get the Sun chest while your first and second rewards are 40 and 60 coins. The Sun Chest has 140 coins, infinite lives for 30 minutes and a powerup. The Star Chest is unlocked when you get 20 stars to open it. It contains a new profile picture, 420 coins and a new puzzle piece to add to the background.

Characters
(In order of appearance in the levels)

Normal Ability: On contact, Chuck backs up and dashes a medium-length distance through blocks, damaging all blocks he pierces through. Charged Ability: Goes slightly farther and deals more damage. Normal Ability: On contact, explodes, dealing damage in a radius around Bomb. (This is less effective than in the other slingshot games, as Bomb is unable to break into the heart of structures and instead explodes immediately on impact). Charged Ability: Deals a bigger, more damaging explosion. Normal Ability: On contact, Silver slams into the ground, piercing through structures below in a short range. Charged Ability: Deals more damage with her dive downwards. Normal Ability: On contact, creates a single bubble dome that lifts up all media inside it and pops after about 1 and a half seconds, dropping the media to damage more media. Charged Ability: Creates a massive bubble able to carry more blocks. Normal Ability: On contact, Red causes a ruckus, targeting 5 random objects/hatchlings and damaging them. Charged Ability: Deals more damage with each hit, and targets more blocks with his ability.
 * Chuck
 * Bomb
 * Silver
 * Stella
 * Red

The Hatchlings must be freed to be collected and count towards your goal for that stage. Hatchlings can be in cages which need to be brought to the floor to be freed from the jar and collected. (The opposite of the caged Hatchlings are Balloons, which must rise to the top of the stage to be collected.) Another objective of the hatchlings is the frozen hatchling, who is trapped inside an ice cube, to melt it you must clear the light way to the cube, destroying the obstacles. (First appeared in the 0.4.0 update) The Piggies also appear in their baby version. Their idle animation shows that they have stolen the eggs/hatchlings. They must be damaged enough (whether by contact of birds or enough media hitting them). There two types, the cubes that don't roll and the somewhat uncommon round.
 * Hatchlings
 * Piglets

Trivia

 * The "Angry Birds Journey - Stolen Egg" trailer was the Gold Winner for the "Game Advertising & Design – Digital AD (Single)" category at the NYX Game awards in November 2021.