Angry Birds bringing out the kid in every Indian

Think Catapult. A simple contraption that every Indian has at some point of time created or tried their hand at - be it plucking mangoes or aiming at the glass window of the not-so-friendly-neighbor. Either in its deadly Y shaped stick and rubber/leather sling format or the user friendly make-do rubber band version of the same with the Y formed between the thumb and Index finger improvising as the Y shaped apparatus - catapults have always had a raw fascination growing up.

All of that latent passion was reinvigorated when Angry Birds, a game that had caught the world by storm, landed on Indian shores this May. What a sensation it has created since then !!

The world over, people spend 200 million minutes a day playing this game. It became the first game to be downloaded 200 million times from the Apple iStore.

Available over iPhones, Android phones, Nokia OVI store or even Google Chrome web store, this simple yet highly addictive game has caught India in a fever like grip.

Published and released by Finland based Rovio, a company specializing in games for hand held devices, Angry Birds has a simple plot that involved, one the 'angry birds' - angry because their eggs have been stolen, two the 'green pigs' - the egg stealers and three the 'paraphernalia' like wood, glass, stone that the pigs use to construct improvisations to hide under. The objective of the game play is to catapult the wingless angry birds from a catapult to destroy the paraphernalia and the pigs at each level. The user has to rely on physics laws of trajectories, the unique characteristics of each type of angry bird ( the blue one can split into 3, the big white one can drop explosive eggs, the yellow one can accelerate once launched, the big black one tends to obliterate everything around it by exploding and so on) to kill the pigs and move onto the next level.

I downloaded it the day it was available on Google Chrome web store and now even my 2 year old daughter comes running the moment the birds start twittering. She even prevents me from launching the birds coz she like their angry twitter. Something I am sure Rovio can think of launching as a mobile ringtone :-)

I see colleagues talking Angry Birds, newspapers reviewing the game, the cyberspace filled with chatter on the game. My gosh! It really has taken India by storm and cut across age barriers.

Here's what Pluggd.in and Trak.in have to say on the story. What has your experience with Angry Birds been?

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