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The latest entry in the ever-successful Angry Birds series is now available to download on iOS and Android.
Angry Birds Stella joins the many assorted Angry Birds brands already available on the market including Space, Star Wars, Transformers, Epic, Friends and Go.
Stella is broadly in line with what players have come to expect from the series core gameplay, although as has become the way the emphasis has very much shifted to in-app purchases (which cost as much as 37.99) and the purchase of ancillary physical products to unlock characters – namely Telepod toys.
Users will also be forced to watch ads as they play the free-to-play title.
Perhaps its biggest deviation from what’s gone before, however, is thematically. Whether it’s the name or the main star’s unmistakably pink colouring, the fear is that while Angry Birds has traditionally targeted what are perceived as male-focused brands such as Star Wars and Transformers, Stella (whose tag line is best friends forever – most of the time”) is directly targeting girls.
Just as I hope people don’t think Star Wars is for boys, I hope they don’t say this is just for girls,” Rovio’s chief marketing officer Blanca Juti told The Guardian.
We want to challenge stereotypes, both on girls – that they only play easy games – and on boys, that they don’t like anything pink. We really want to challenge this, and there is already a bit of a movement around it.
It does celebrate women: we have five female heroes and one male, and all the pigs… well, we don’t know what they are. But most importantly, we wanted to make a kick-ass game. I do think it will attract females as well. I hope it does. But it is not just for girls.”
