Angry Birds Stella Review: Pay to Play is Never OK, Even for a Freemium (Video)

Angry Birds Stella debuted on September 4th and this game is available for free, well actually it’s a freemium title, that features 120 levels of fun. You get new birds, feminine characters, with new powers and new environments.

The new birds are called Willow, Luca, Dahlia and Poppy and each of them has special powers. The pink one uses the power of ricoche to damage pigs, while the yellow one triggers a vertical tornado, the small and blue bird triggers ultrasounds that destroy ice, while the little baby bird with a hat is able to roll forward like the toucan in the older Angry Birds titles. Then there’s the beige bird that teleports and we even have boss battles, that shouldn’t exactly be called that, since they involve no challenge whatsoever.

The main villain of the game is a bird that feels like the character Angelina Jolie plays in Maleficent. I played the game on the Samsung Galaxy S4 and found the graphics to be quite nice. We’ve got new bird sounds and it was shocking for me to see that we’re now supposed to gather coins and spend them on a wall of smoke that stops you from playing more levels.

Powerups and extra birds mean spending coins here and by the way, sometimes even getting the required last bird to trigger a 3 star level cost me money (virtual coins). The levels are very repetitive, as far as design goes and it all feels like a recycled Angry Birds Rio. You can bounce off drums, calculate your ricoches and enjoy fluid animations. There’s also a mechanism that involves a hammer, sort of like Thor’s that kills all the pigs in the area it strikes.

There are also unlockables, like varied versions of the characters, with fake mustaches, sun glasses and various garments. The game is cute, I mean for the kids and characters have much personality, but still there are too many pay to play and pay to win mechanisms to enjoy the experience. We give the game a 6.5 out of 10 and you can download it here.