Whenever a new game, franchise or genre becomes mega-successful, countless similar titles and rip-offs are bound to emerge. Rovio's now-iconic Angry Birds series is one of the most successful mobile franchises of all time, and for good reason — the simple, physics-based gameplay is quick and addictive, the birds and pigs have colourful and silly personalities and each new entry has a great deal of polish and shows that the developers are continuing to experiment and toy with the core gameplay to find new ideas. Cypronia's Angry Bunnies, which crosses the threshold of "clone" and goes right into "rip-off" territory, shows none of Angry Birds' ingenuity and is sure to disappoint anyone who downloads it, especially at the unacceptably high price of $8.99 USD.
Angry Bunnies follows the exact gameplay as Angry Birds. For the few gamers who have not played the huge franchise, the premise is rather simple: players fling angry birds into wooden, stone and ice structures that house trapped pigs in order to destroy the structure and kill the pigs. In Angry Bunnies, players fling angry bunnies into wooden, stone and ice structures that house trapped foxes in order to destroy the structure and kill the foxes. Like Angry Birds, there are different types of bunnies that have special abilities. In addition to the regular blue bunny, there is a brown bunny that speeds up when the stylus taps the touch screen; a white bunny that triggers several little explosions upon impact; a large green bunny that has more weight and can destroy more structures at once; and a "bomber" bunny that drops egg bombs when tapped while in flight. Additionally, each level has three carrots to collect.
There are five "story" modes, each with 30 levels to master, but there is no actual "story" to be found. Whereas Angry Birds usually has some kind of opening cinematic to lend a bit of context (even if it's intentionally absurd), the only distinguishing aspect of each mode is different background art. The shoddy presentation is prominent throughout; the poor, low-res visuals recall the most generic of '90s PC shareware graphics. The sound effects — which amount to one-note dumb bunny "ouch" bites and simple crash-boom-bangs — are grating after a few minutes of repetition.
These shortcomings would be easier to swallow if Angry Bunnies nailed the familiar gameplay, but it unfortunately fails at that, too. The visual instructions for new birds — which also rip off Angry Birds' intuitive tutorial style — are not clear until experimenting with trial and error and restarting the level. Flinging the bunnies on the touch screen while viewing a wider view on the top screen is confusing, and with no instruction at first, the player will likely have to start the first level over several times. The bunnies also take far too long to disappear after a turn; on more than one occasion, a bunny continued to say "ow!" while laying upside down on the ground, delaying the next turn so severely it seemed like it was a game-breaking glitch. And while the 3D effect deepens the screen, it also slows the game's already-poor framerate.
Conclusion
Angry Bunnies is a shameless, shoddily designed rip-off of superior game that can already be purchased and downloaded on multiple platforms for a much more reasonable price. There is very little to recommend here; had the game been super-cheap — like Angry Birds on iOS and Android devices — the amateurish experience might be a tiny bit more acceptable. But for anyone looking to play Angry Birds on their 3DS, there are retail versions that offer a much stronger experience. Steer clear of Angry Bunnies.
Comments 37
Oh dear.
Hahaha there's really a game called Angry Bunnies?! This piece of Junk deserves a 1 on principle alone
For an Angry Birds ripoff, it must be quite bad to not even make it at least a 5.
lol Nowadays, you can make a game with angry anything and make it a rip-off of Angry Birds. "Angry Bunnies" ..how imaginative. How 'bout Angry Gophers? Or Angry Chinchillas? haha
Not surprised. They are really not creative with naming their games.
I SMELL LAWSUIT.
Pfft! They're not even trying to hide the similarities.
Wow, now even terrible rip-offs (in this case Angry Birds) are being copied by terrible rip-offs (Angry Bunnies)? And both even share their love for horrible character designs.
I'll stick to Artillery, Ballerburg, Worms and the likes.
wow that vid made me feal a bit sick with all that wobbleing
Can they actually get away with that? Or is rovio gonna sue them through the nose (beak)?
GAAAH!!! The music from that trailer is STUCK IN MY HEAD!!! GETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFF!!!
How can a game like this even make it to the eShop? Don't they have like... standards?
Crap shovelware - Advertised as a Nintendo Ecvlusive???? I hope NOBODY buys this at all to teach the lazy debs a lesson
I played this. And it's every bit as bad as Lee says.
Ugh.
@Philip_J_Reed Why did you voluntarily play this?
Court order.
I wonder what it is with game names nowadays. It's always adjective + noun (Angry Birds, Amazing Alex, Tiny Wings etc. etc.). They probably have some sort of mobile game generator that decides these things. Heck, maybe it even picks the gameplay from one of the three options available.
So, what's next? Angry Elephants? Angry Llamas? Angry Platypi?
...
Angry Ponies?
Cypronia should be ashamed for trying to shamelessy rip of another franchise. They really have the balls to ask $9 for it on top of that. Jerks.
@KeeperBvK one of the few things I actually like about angry birds and a big part of the series success is their incredibly good character design.
This.... On the other hand... It seems someone found the circle tool in photoshop and went nuts with it and the plasticky effects.
Angry Birds gets boring quite quickly.
Best Mobile games are : (Not including ports or emulations).
Spacechem
Osmos HD
Dodonpachi Maximum
Punch Quest is pretty good actually. (Not too different to how I play those type of games anyway).
$9 for this ripped off garbage? NO.
@Swiket:Nice one!
From the makers of Fruit Ninja, they proudly present 2 U.......Angry Bunnies, one of the most sucssful mo......I mean, 3DS eshop titles of all time (not really)
This is orinagianally at its best, Angry Birds, what that, they stole from this from the bunnies.......who are angry (even if Angey Birds came after, the birds look better, and this is coming from someone who doesn't like Angry Birds, and that is saying a lot)
10/10 carrots (but 8 of them were eaten)
@SheldonRandoms !
This is just bad... So, so very bad.
How did this get two stars?
@DreamyViridi Right! I mean come on, like it wasn't already the biggest rip-off ever, some bunnies lay eggs?! Sure, easter eggs exist, but that just show that they took AB, slapped bunnies and foxes on it, and managed to make it bad.
@Swiket I'd play that.
Angry Birds? Superior? I don't care for that crap, and I say the same to anything that tries to copy said crap.
YUCK
Easter Eggstravaganza scored higher than this. A holiday cash-in with an egg pun in its title was more critically acclaimed than this game.
I think this would be the point in any programmer's life where they start questioning their life goals, and what they're doing with their lives.
Remember, these are the same guys that did cake ninja.
Guess I'll stick with mad donkeys.
Wow, it's a Nintendo exclusive! Totally poop-tastic!!
Now it's only $4.99. Worth a shot?
$9 for a game that's a BLATANT knock-off of a game that's FREE?!! BWAHAHAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAAA!!!!
@grumblegrumble no
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