It’s lunch time for the pigs, and launch time for the birds! Angry Birds Space was released in 2012 on March 22nd. The game consisted of multiple levels that took place in space. New to the game were anti-gravity & gravity zone mechanics. The existing birds also got modified designs & some of them even got upgraded powers.
Sadly, the ‘rocket returned to Earth’ and the game was unlisted in 2019, alongside many other Angry Birds games. However, those who previously downloaded the game could still play it, so long as they didn’t delete it off of their device.
As for me, I managed to play the game again on my phone, and I’m just as terrible as I was in 2014. However, it thankfully doesn’t get rid of the fun factor. It’s still classic Angry Birds game-play, with modifications to fit the space theme.
Overall, the game is fun, but rather difficult. I’m not just saying that because I’m bad at the game (even though I am), but out of all the Angry Birds games, this game seems to have the hardest time with pacing, as there are numerous massive spikes or drops in difficulty. As you progress, it’s obvious that it will get harder to beat levels, but in this game, the difficulty of getting three-stars on levels is rather inconsistent and all-over-the-place.
The game currently has a total of 13 worlds, with most of the names being puns based on existing astronomy phenomena. These worlds are Pig Blast, Cold Cuts, Fry Me To The Moon, Utopia, Red Planet, Pig Dipper, Cosmic Crystals, Beak Impact Parts 1 & 2, Brass Hogs, Solar System, Eggstroids, and Danger Zone. Every world contains a different set of levels, with most of them containing 30 levels, excluding all the bonus levels.
There are exceptions, though. Fry Me To The Moon is the shortest level pack of them all, with only 10 levels in total. Both parts of Beak Impact only contain 20 levels. Solar System only includes 13 levels, and Eggstroids, like Fry Me To The Moon, also only houses 10 levels.
Every bird in the game has a modified version of their standard design, and some of them got upgraded powers.
Red is now known as Space Bird, The Blues became Lightning Birds, Chuck became Laser Bird, Bomb turned into Space Bomb, Terrance became Monster Bird, and finally, Bubbles turned into Cosmic Bubbles.
Ice Bird is the new bird who sadly only appeared in this one game. His power involves transforming surrounding blocks into ice blocks upon activation. As it turns out, unless you’re using the Lightning Birds immediately after, this power isn’t very helpful.
The game works about the same as you’d expect out of a classic Angry Birds game. You’ll use a slingshot to fling birds and send them crashing in a structure built by the pigs. You can win the level by popping every pig in the level, whether that be through crushing them, sending them falling, freezing them, or just through direct contact.
Every level gives you a different set of birds to work with. Since different birds have different abilities, each level must be tailored to the specific birds that are being used, and that’s where the main difficulty of this game comes in: In most cases, unless you can figure out the perfect sequence of shots, the level is extremely difficult or even impossible to either get three-stars on, or even beat at all. Not every level has the most ideal set of birds included, which isn’t the most helpful when certain birds work really well with certain materials & are weak against other materials.
Unlike most modern-day games, the Angry Birds games actually give the score a purpose, as it is used to determine how many stars you receive at the end of a level. Angry Birds Space is no different. Each level has a different score requirement in order to acquire 3-stars. However, these scores can sometimes be hard to reach. You’ll usually get points by destroying blocks and parts of the stage, alongside an extra 5000 points for every pig you pop. If you have any remaining birds you haven’t used after all the pigs have been popped, you’ll also get an additional 10,000 points for each remaining bird. This is where most of the points are collected. The accumulated points determine your score, and thus, the amount of stars you receive for the level. But once again, getting a good enough score usually isn’t the easiest.
Since certain birds are weak against certain materials, it can be a little difficult to destroy the entire stage with those birds only, making it harder to rack up more points. Additionally, pigs are sometimes placed in the middle of structures containing strong materials and thick walls, making it harder to pop them in one go. As such, you may need to use multiple birds to pop said pig, resulting in less points at the end.
This is what makes getting 3-stars hard.
If you do get 3-stars on all the levels on a certain page (Each page ordinarily houses 10 levels), you’ll unlock Special Levels. These are entirely optional, but work the same as standard levels (all of the pigs in the level must be popped). However, instead of flinging birds, you’re flinging a Space Egg that somehow creates a black hole upon activation.
While this concept might sound incredibly cool and overpowered on paper, it really doesn’t work well in actual execution, and it ends up becoming one of the most frustrating parts of the game, especially if you are looking to get three-stars on these levels. For the most part, these levels require a great amount of trial and error, as it’s extremely difficult to work well with these.
Not every world contains these types of levels. Specifically, Brass Hogs, Danger Zone, & Eggstroids do not include any kind of Special Levels.
If you explore some of the levels in the game, you’ll probably find some golden eggs lying around. These are called Eggstroids, and they are used to unlock special levels in the game. Some of these levels are based on other games, such as Ping pong or Space Invaders. Others are simply there to make getting high scores easy. Generally speaking, they’re not meant to be actual levels.
An exception to this, however, are the eggs located in Red Planet (Episode 5). These will instead open up levels that resemble a standard level more closely. These levels are accessed in the Eggstroids World. While most of them are opened via a standard level selection screen, the Red Planet levels are located on a second page, and are accessed by clicking on rovers. As with the rest of the game, these levels can give the player up to 3 stars.
Danger Zone is a part of the game that really disappoints me. While I love the concept of it and am always looking for challenges, this level pack is sadly blocked behind a microtransaction. Sure, you can play the first level for free, but the rest of them require the player to pay $0.99 to unlock them.
Unique to this world are mines, which explode shortly upon coming into contact with something (either a bird, pig, or a block).
This world doesn’t really seem to have much of a story. The introductory cutscene only shows some pigs floating around the Danger Zone in bubbles, and the ending cutscene shows the birds flying out of the Danger Zone. Nothing else is shown.
Solar System is the most recent world in the game. This one is actually rather unique, as all of the levels are based on our solar system.
Most levels are based on planets, with some of the levels being based on other parts of our solar system (the moon, asteroid belt, europa, and a comet. Additionally, an ISS and New Horizons Satellite are the basis for the two special levels).
Unique to this world is the egg bomb (well, it doesn’t have an official name). Upon coming into contact with something, the egg will detonate and create a small explosion. When this happens, a text box appears on screen that actually gives you information on the planet that you’re current level is based on. There are a total of 5 possible texts that can show up for each planet.
Brass Hogs is one of the most recent worlds added to the game. However, the way you unlock these levels is rather odd. By completing various quests (get 3-stars on a specific level, or get a feather on a level, as some examples), you’ll receive quest points, which can be used to unlock Brass Hogs levels. Unfortunately, you only get 3 quests each day, so this level pack will probably take a very long time to complete.
Upon completing Level 2 of Brass Hogs, you will unlock access to the Mirror World.
The Mirror World is essentially a harder version of the original game. To unlock Mirror World levels, you must get 3-stars on the standard version of the level.
Not only are mirror levels, well, mirrored, but there are more pigs to deal with. Considering that the mirror form of the very first level in the game was already difficult, you can tell that the rest of the Mirror World will be incredibly difficult to complete, let alone get 3-stars on! Thankfully, Special Levels are not a part of the Mirror World.
Eggstroids and Danger Zone are also not included in the Mirror World, quite thankfully. While the eggstroids probably wouldn’t be too bad in Mirror form, the Danger Zone levels would likely become some of the hardest levels in the game.
So with all of this in mind, what do I think of the game specifically? It is most certainly very fun, but also very difficult. It’s more Angry Birds, and if that’s what you want, this game is for you! In fact, Angry Birds Star Wars actually took some inspiration from this game and took the gravity/anti-gravity mechanics with it!
However, we do need to talk about the difficulty. It feels like this game really struggles with keeping pacing. Keeping the difficulty in Danger Zone or the Mirror Worlds is perfectly fine, but it seems like the pacing in the rest of the worlds is very rough and chaotic. Some levels are incredibly hard to get 3-stars on, or even beat, while others are incredibly easy. Also, when you start a new world, the difficulty briefly goes down again, which makes sense, considering there are new mechanics that the player will need to get used to, but no more than a couple of levels later, the difficulty spikes right back up again and continues from where it left off.
And with most mobile games, this game also has in-app-purchases. This is mainly in the form of purchasing power-ups. As mentioned earlier, nearly all of Danger Zone is also blocked off by a purchase. Beak Impact Part 2 is also purchasable for $0.99, although you can unlock this world for free by getting 3-stars in every Beak Impact Part 1 level. Similarly, if you don’t want to spend time getting 3 stars on every level, you can purchase all of Mirror World for $5.99 and unlock every Mirror Level in an instant, but of course, this is not recommended.
Please remember that this article is entirely subjective, and is very opinion-based. Different people may have different thoughts on the game, and there is no definitive answer as to if this is a good game or not. However, the general consensus of this game is that it’s very hard. But thankfully, it’s not a big enough setback for this game to be considered an Angry Birds classic. So much so, that it even returned in Angry Birds Reloaded! However, that requires an Apple Arcade Subscription. So if you have the original or have some means of playing the original, play that instead.
