Angry Birds Space is the fifth installment in the
Angry Birds franchise
note following the original, Seasons, Rio, and Friends. While the story is pretty much the same (
but in SPACE), the gameplay is completely different from the other games in the series.
This game provides examples of:
- All There in the Manual: Although unmentioned in the game itself, promotional materials (including a trailer and a tie-in comic) explain how the birds got into space, how they met Ice Bird, and why they all have new designs.If you're wondering... Ice Bird crash landed onto Piggy Island after falling out of a wormhole, carrying an Eggsteroid. A pig UFO then grabbed the Eggsteroid and fled through the portal, with Ice Bird following. After realizing that their own eggs were stolen as well, the flock went into the portal to retrieve them, being transformed into their space forms in the process.
- Asteroid Miners: The pig are this on the ARM Initiative inspired "Beak Impact" episode.
- Asteroid Thicket: The premise of several levels.
- Arc Villain: Most of the episodes feature King Pig as the antagonist, but a few of them feature different villains. "Fry Me To the Moon" has Foreman Pig, "Utopia" has Fat Pig, "Red Planet" has some Minion Pigs who hijacked a rover, and "Cosmic Crystals" has a three-eyed Alien Pig. Hektor Porko is seemingly the main villain of the Mirror World mode, as he appears in almost every level; he also appears to be the main antagonist of "Brass Hogs", but he strangely is never fought, with King Pig being the boss instead.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Due to being too big to damage directly, to defeat Fat Pig in his boss fight, you must feed him birds, asteroids, and burnt popcorn.
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: Unlike the pigs, the birds are zooming around in vacuum with no ill effects.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Matilda has strangely been left out of Space. Notable because she is one of the five original members of the Flock. Stella and Hal have also been seemingly forgotten. note This may be because Matilda and Stella’s abilities rely on gravity to work properly, and the majority of levels in Space do not have consistent gravity. Additionally, Hal has been functionally replaced by Chuck’s new ability (flying towards where the player taps the screen), which explains his absence.
- In December 2023, a beta version of Angry Birds Space was leaked alongside one terabyte of other IPAs of TestFlight apps from 2012 to 2015. The beta version contains what seems to be a Drill Bird
that resembles Hal. Whether it is intended to be him or not is unconfirmed to this day.
- Colony Drop: Some levels let the birds impact with asteroids to send them into the gravity well of a planet, crushing any pigs they make impact with.
- Crystal Landscape: "Cosmic Crystals" is a crystal-themed world, with lots of crystalline terrain and blocks. Some of the planets themselves are made of crystal, and can be destroyed by a big enough impact.
- Dark World: The Mirror World, unlocked by clearing level two of "Brass Hogs". The levels have a darker color scheme (though this can be turned off in the settings), and are much harder than the regular game's levels.
- Death by Gluttony: The boss of Utopia is a giant, fat pig that sucks in any food that lands on him, they way you beat him is by making him swallow boulders, birds, or burnt popcorn.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: "Cosmic Crystals" introduces crystal planets, which can be destroyed after being damaged enough. Doing so causes its atmosphere to dissipate and creates a Planar Shockwave that hurtles everything situated on the planet away.
- Empathic Environment: The planet-sized alien fish in the "Pig Dipper" episode will react to your moves, looking surprised or angry as debris, pigs, and birds land on them.
- Eternal Engine: "Brass Hogs" is a Steampunk-themed variant, with mechanical planets and steam valves that push objects.
- Faceship: The Alien Pig from "Cosmic Crystals" rides around in a starship shaped like a giant pig.
- Fake Longevity: Unlike every other episode, the levels of "Brass Hogs" are not unlocked by completing them in order—instead, each level has to be unlocked by completing daily missions. You only get three per day, with no way to speed them up, so unlocking all of the levels in the episode is a lengthy process.
- Fat Slob: In Utopia, The pigs gain a new animation that has them eating popcorn, chewing with their mouths open while burping loudly.
- Flying Saucer: The King Pig flies around in one. Some of the normal pigs can also be found in structures made to look like one.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: If you use Red’s battle cry, pigs in a certain area will jump into the air. Terrence does this too, but it’s much stronger.
- Gravity Screw: The game's central mechanic. Most of the levels are set in the vaccuum of space, which has no gravity. However, certain planets have gravitational fields, which draw nearby objects toward them and affect the birds' trajectories.
- Gravity Sucks: Most planets have a gravitational field, represented by a transparent circle surrounding it. If a bird, pig, or anything else drifts inside that circle, they will immediately be drawn toward the planet. The gravitational field also counts as an atmosphere (meaning pigs don't have to wear space helmets and will instantly recover if theirs was popped), and not every planet has one.
- An Ice Person: A new bird simply called the Ice Bird freezes solid everything in its blast radius as its special ability. This can often take out pigs immediately, and makes things like wood and stone brittle enough that the blue birds can shatter them easily.
- Kevlard: In some levels, there are fat pigs that are more resilient than regular pigs because most projectiles bounce off of their body. The aforementioned giant pig is completely impervious to birds and can only be defeated by making him eat inedible objects.
- Level Ate: "Utopia", the fourth episode of the game, is entirely made out of food—it has giant donuts, candy apples, and pies for planets, bouncy jelly platforms, popcorn asteroids, and more.
- Literally Shattered Lives: Pigs that the ice bird freezes can be shattered by flinging another bird at it. Pigs that are flung out of an atmosphere will also freeze and then break.
- Nuclear Mutant: In the "Beak Impact" episode, rocks with radioactivity signs can shatter and create bubbles of radioactivity (complete with Geiger counter clicking) that turn pigs into bloated, three-eyed monsters before popping them.
- Planar Shockwave: One of these is emitted when a crystal planet explodes, sending everything that was on it flying.
- Product Placement/Loophole Abuse: What do you mean, NASA couldn't legally advertise? Unless Rovio asked them of course. The "Red Planet" and "Beak Impact" episodes are based on NASA's Mars programme and the proposed Asteroid Retrieval Mission. Eggs are replaced with various NASA spacecrafts.
- Raygun Gothic: The game's entire aesthetic.
- Real-World Episode: There are two episodes set on real-life planets: "Red Planet" (set on Mars) and "Solar System" (where each level takes place near a different planet in our solar system).
- Recycled with a Gimmick: Provides the page image. It's Angry Birds IN SPACE!!!
- Remixed Level: Every level up until "Brass Hogs" has a Mirror World counterpart, which can be played after three-starring the regular level (and unlocking the Mirror World mode, of course). Each of these levels are flipped horizontally and modified to be much harder than the original level.
- Riding into the Sunset: The end of the "Red Planet" episode.
- Shout-Out:
- Most of the Eggsteroids bonus levels are built to resemble retro games, including Space Invaders, Super Mario Bros., Arkanoid, Bubble Bobble, Star Castle, Pong, Trouble (even though it's a board game and not a video game), Tetris, Pac-Man, and Missile Command.
- Sometimes, if a bird just barely misses a pig, it'll laugh in a way very reminiscent of the dog from Duck Hunt.
- Sickly Green Glow: In "Beak Impact", there are certain rocks that explode into radioactive fragments that mutate pigs that are too close into swollen, three eyed monstrosities that pop after a short time. Guess what color those are?
- Single-Biome Planet: Most of the planets in each episode all have one environment all the time.
- Space Friction: When a block or pig is flung off into space, they will eventually slow down until they stop. In real life, this wouldn’t happen because there is no air in space, which means no friction to slow stuff down, so anything that gets flung away will keep moving at that exact speed until it hits something.
- Space Is Cold: If a pig’s air bubble is popped outside of an atmosphere, it will freeze and then shatter after a few seconds. If they enter a gravity well on a planet, they'll unfreeze and act just fine.
- Space Is Noisy: "Yahoo!" *crash* *boom*
- Space "X": According to promotional material, these versions of the birds are known as the "Space Flock" and the pigs as the "Space Pigs". The Mighty Eagle has also been renamed the "Space Eagle".
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: "Cold Cuts" and "Fry Me To the Moon" are both icy planets, with appropriately ice-themed gimmicks like snowy blocks and slippery surfaces.
- Superheroes in Space: The birds have all been given a superhero-like makeover to go with the sci-fi theme.
- Tank Goodness: The first boss of the game is a large space tank piloted by King Pig, which shoots bubbles containing vegetables and asteroids. Direct attacks can't penetrate the tank, but popping the bubbles containing the asteroids and letting them fall on it is effective.
- Under the Sea: "Pig Dipper" is a water-themed world. It introduces water atmospheres, which light objects (such as wood, ice, and birds) can float on and heavy objects (like stone, pigs, or Terence) sink in.
