Angry Birds Blast Tips, Cheats and Strategies

Angry Birds Blast is a matching puzzler from Rovio. In this game, players will pop sets of balloons containing the iconic Angry Birds in order to free them and take down the ever-devious Green Pigs. Gamezebo’s Angry Birds Blast Tips, Cheats and Strategies will help you perfect your bird-saving skills and defeat those Piggies once and for all (or until the next Angry Birds game, at least).

• (Almost) everything floats up. Angry Birds Blast is a somewhat unique matching game, at least compared to the more popular Bejeweled and Candy Crush-style. Instead of tiles falling down onto the board from above, they appear from the bottom, and matching balloons will cause the balloons below those that are matched to float upward. This means that matching on the bottom row will have the least impact on the other tiles on the board, while matching higher up will be potentially more disruptive as balloons float into the now-empty space. Non-balloon objects, like Piggies, their forts, and cages will not float up even when an empty space appears above them.
• Tap near the bottom when the board is good and the top when it’s bad. Got a lot of large groups of balloons ready to pop? Pop from the bottom to avoid messing up all your balloon sets. Have a tough board without many good options? Tap near the top to get new balloons to float into place and hopefully mix things up.
• Try to avoid long, singular columns of balloons. The other important difference to remember in Angry Birds Blast is that instead of swapping tiles to make matches, you will be tapping blocks of already-touching tiles to remove any of the same color. This means that the more of a single color is grouped together, the more tiles you can remove at once. Creating a single column will make it much harder to make matches since there will be nothing on either side to potentially group with your long, standalone column. When in doubt, make smaller matches on either side of the board to prevent being shoehorned in.

• Combine power-ups whenever possible. Although the earnable power-ups in Angry Birds Blast that appear when you make large matches—the Rocket, Bomb, and Laser Gun—are useful when used one at a time, they are at their most powerful when combined. If two power-ups are touching on the board, using either one will automatically combine them into a much stronger version. Combining power-ups can be the difference between removing just a small group of tiles or every tile on the board.
• Power-ups will show up on whichever balloon you tap. When collecting large groups of balloons, you control where their power-up appears simply by tapping. Of course, if you tap on the bottom balloon in a matching column, the resulting power-up will float up when the balloons are removed, but this is very useful when attempting to combine power-ups or reach a specific row or column with an explosion.

• The type of power-up you’ll earn for clearing a set of balloons is visible on the balloons themselves. Forget how many balloons you need to earn a Bomb or Laser Gun? When a group of Birds is large enough to reward a power-up, the icon of the power-up will replace the face of the Birds inside the balloons. If you pop a different set of balloons and the group disperses to a size that will not award that power-up, this icon will change back to the Birds’ faces (or a different icon for a smaller balloon-count power-up). In the image above, you can see we have a Laser Gun power-up waiting if we tap on the large set of white balloons.
• The Rocket power-up changes direction each turn. If you earn a Rocket power-up but it’s facing up when you really need it to be facing right, just make another move (pop a set of balloons). The Rocket will turn to face the other direction on the next turn. Rockets always change direction every time you make a move, so you’ll always be able to choose whether you want to clear a row or a column once you earn one.

• Notes on a few level types: Most of the obstacles in Angry Birds Blast can be solved by popping balloons near them. Minion Pigs will be defeated if two sets of balloons are popped near them; bubbles will go away if the Bird underneath them is popped; glass is shattered if a balloon next to it is popped, etc. However, some objects require you to pop balloons next to them while others require you to pop balloons inside them. Pigs and their forts are affected by balloons next to them while bubbles and cages are only affected by balloons inside of them. This is most important to remember when using power-ups: if you send a Rocket across a line of bubbles with no Birds underneath them, the bubbles will not be removed because no Birds were popped inside them.
• Gold coins vs. silver coins: There are two types of currency in Angry Birds Blast: gold coins and silver coins. Gold is the more “premium” currency and harder to come by. You’ll earn these very rarely and usually for special gifts or rewards, like logging in to Facebook. Silver coins are earned for completing levels, turning in quests, as prizes in the Daily/Weekly tasks, etc. Silver coins can be used to buy some pre-game boosters, while gold is used to buy the purchasable power-ups and continues (+5 moves) upon losing a level. You can trade gold coins in for silver by tapping on your silver coin total on the map screen, but gold coins are much more valuable and harder to come by, so we recommend saving them as much as possible.

• Remember to turn in Quests as you earn Hatchlings. The “Quest” system in Angry Birds Blast is basically just completing levels and receiving rewards, but you need to actively collect your rewards to get them. Tap on the Quest menu (the third icon down on the right side of the map screen, above “ToonsTV”) to see a list of Quests and how many Hatchlings you currently have. You’ll earn Hatchlings for completing levels with Hatchlings on the level icon, and these are added to your available total. To complete Quests, you basically “spend” the Hatchlings by tapping the red “Collect” button—so if you have a Quest that requires one blue Hatchling you can turn in that blue Hatchling to get the reward, but he’ll no longer be in your inventory. In the image above, we’re about to spend our only white Hatchling to complete the “Find some little buddies and have a party!” Quest. The Quest rewards are usually silver coins.
• Save the Daily/Weekly task until you’re out of lives. The Daily/Weekly task (which becomes available after you beat level 25) lets you play an endless board where your only goal is to remove as many Pigs as possible in the moves available. You receive two free plays of this every day and it does not cost you hearts when you lose, so this is a good thing to save for when you’ve run out of hearts and are waiting for a refill.
• You can get a free booster upon retrying a level. If you lose a level and choose not to continue (continuing costs gold coins and adds only five more moves to your count), you’ll be returned to the level’s overview screen with the “retry” option. If you choose to retry, you’ll be offered a free booster in exchange for watching a video. This only happens upon retrying a level after losing—so if you lose a level, exit to the map, and return to it later, you won’t get this option. This is a pretty nice boost and can sometimes mean the difference between losing again or beating the level, so we recommend it for any stages you’re struggling with.

• Boosters vs. power-ups vs. items: There are three types of useful objects in Angry Birds Blast, although they overlap somewhat. Boosters are selected before you begin a level and are applied immediately: things like the Bomb booster, which puts a Bomb on the board as soon as you begin, or the +3 Moves booster, which adds three moves to the move count total. The Twister booster is actually an in-level item that must be activated before it goes into effect, so it’s always selected on the Booster screen. Power-ups are the things you earn for collecting large groups of Birds—five for a Rocket, nine for a Bomb, etc.—which appear as soon as you tap the large group. In-level items are purchasable versions of these power-ups which can be used any time as long as you own one or have the money to purchase one. These include Laser Guns and Rockets, but also feature items you can’t get from popping balloons like the Slingshot and Twister. These in-level items are sort of last resort and should be saved for times you really need them, like you’re one move away from defeat but two moves from victory.

• Check the map for free coins. Occasionally—about once or twice per day—when you open the game there will be a yellow box on the map. If you tap this, it will reward you a small amount of silver coins. This box is typically near your current level, but you can scroll up and down the map if you don’t see one immediately. In the image above, you can see a gift box above level 33.

• Send lives to friends (real or otherwise). You’ll sometimes get a pop-up requesting lives for friends, either ones you’ve connected with on Facebook or the random “imaginary” friends the game assigns to you if you haven’t connected. Sending them lives doesn’t cost you anything and will often get you lives back in return, so always respond positively to any requests.
• Save your bonus lives for when you really need them. Lives you receive from friends can be collected from your messages inbox. However, you don’t have to use them right away; uncollected lives will remain in your inbox seemingly indefinitely, so hold onto them until you reach a really tough level.
• Luck is definitely a factor in winning. Although some levels will start with the same set of balloons or a specific group of colors together, the balloons that filter in after you start making matches are random. You’ll inevitably have some really great games where you finish ten moves ahead and some less-than-great games, where you don’t even come close to meeting the goal. Sometimes these will be on the same level. All you can do is try again, attempt to combine power-ups, pay close attention to the goals and pursue them exclusively, and hope for a better set of balloons next time.

Jillian Werner

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Jillian will play any game with cute characters or an isometric perspective, but her favorites are Fallout 3, Secret of Mana, and Harvest Moon. Her PC suffers from permanent cat-on-keyboard syndrome, which she blames for most deaths in Don’t Starve. She occasionally stops gaming long enough to eat waffles and rewatch Battlestar Galactica.