Angry Birds Rio

Few mobile tie-ins have been as closely linked to a film as Angry Birds Rio. Rovio released it on March 22, 2011, as a promotion for Rio, the animated film by Blue Sky Studios and 20th Century Fox, which reached cinemas a few weeks later.

Angry Birds Rio Swapped Pigs For Smugglers

For once, the green pigs are not the main enemy. The story borrows the film’s smuggling plot, so the flock has been kidnapped and taken to Rio de Janeiro, where they have to break out of cages and then free other exotic birds. Early levels ask you to smash open cages instead of knocking down pig fortresses, and later episodes bring in marmosets as targets. Blu and Jewel, the two blue macaws from the film, join as birds you can launch only in this game.

Nigel And Mauro Gave The Series Its First Boss Fights

Nigel, the cockatoo villain from the film, orders the smugglers to capture the flock and hires a gang of marmosets led by Mauro to hunt them. Defeating Nigel and Mauro in dedicated levels made these the first boss fights in any Angry Birds game. Bosses took repeated hits rather than one lucky shot, which pushed players to plan a sequence of birds. Not everyone was impressed, and Gamezebo’s reviewer called them a little anti-climactic.

Every Angry Birds Rio Episode And What It Added

Rovio kept the game growing for three years. The episodes, in rough order, were:

1. Smugglers’ Den and Jungle Escape, the launch pair with 30 levels each
2. Beach Volley in May 2011
3. Carnival Upheaval in June 2011
4. Airfield Chase in August 2011
5. Smugglers’ Plane, begun in November 2011 and finished in January 2012
6. Golden Beachball, a bonus episode later expanded
7. Market Mayhem in March 2013 with 34 levels
8. Four Rio 2 episodes between December 2013 and July 2014

A Trophy Room update in March 2012 added 12 more levels, and the Timber Tumble episode brought a hint feature. Each episode hid a golden fruit, so pineapples sat in Smugglers’ Den, bananas in Jungle Escape, watermelons in Beach Volley, papayas in Carnival Upheaval and strawberries in Market Mayhem.

How The Rio 2 Film Gave Angry Birds Rio A Second Life

When Rio 2 was on its way to cinemas in 2014, Rovio refreshed the game’s graphics and added four new episodes themed on the sequel. That kept Angry Birds Rio in the charts long after most film tie-ins disappear. It passed 10 million downloads in 2011 and was among the top downloaded games on Google Play in both 2012 and 2014. On Android it was always free with ads, which helped it spread quickly.

Angry Birds Rio Was Delisted In 2020

On February 3, 2020, Rovio removed Angry Birds Rio from Google Play and the App Store, together with its Star Wars games, and stopped the ads and purchases inside it. When fans asked in 2021 whether it would return, a Rovio employee said a re-release was unlikely because of third-party licensing, since the film characters belong to another studio.

That means there is no official Android listing today, and no remaster in the Rovio Classics line. Old installs may still open on older phones, but the game’s servers for purchases are off, and the original build may not run on newer devices that only support 64-bit apps.

Who Remembers Angry Birds Rio Most Fondly

Families who watched the film got the most out of it, because the jungle, the beach and the carnival scenes match what they saw on screen. Puzzle players often remember the cage levels, which asked for different thinking than the pig towers in the original, and the steady stream of free episodes that turned a movie promotion into a game people played for years.