Angry Birds: My Arty Version

This is a magazine article from Web designer that goes through Angry birds success and the concept behind it. The article has helped me to grasp an understanding of how the game has developed and the simplicity behind the idea that has led to its success.

Angry birds started out as just some character designs that Jaakko Lisalo (one of the team that worked on it) created. It was a mixture of some of his favorite games of the time (including Patapon). The game was designed to be casual and accessible to everyone. Two elements that make the game successful is that it has a simple yet strong scoring system and it plays on physics based gameplay that was becoming popular at the time. Lisalo also says that the audience form a connection with the game through the strength in the character design.

So what have I learnt from Angry birds- That people are looking for casual, simple escapism so that they don't feel like they are doing any work, whereas with art apps they feel that they have to focus. Art apps are hard to create detail with which makes it frustrating and unenjoyable for the user.

Here is my concept for an arty version of Angry birds. Through creating this art app I am to create a casual gaming app that young art students will be attracted to and not realise that they are learning through completing each level.

Here is the introductory screen to give the gamer a goal/reason to get involved with the game.

The aim of the game is to hit the coloured art tools against the matching colours in the canvas so that the gamer can gain their art tools back. The art tools will be displayed in the top left hand corner.

Also after each level is completed it will show up in a tally to give the gamer a sense of achievement.

If the player fails the level they will be asked an art related question about the canvas to potentially get on to the next level.

I plan to do a mock-up of the user interface and compare it to a pure art app. This will gain me an understanding of how art students will respond to each app and what will develop the creation, display and teaching of traditional art practice.