Alanna YeeWhat: Angry Birds Universe
Where: Telus World of Science
When: Now until April 4th
Price: $28 (adult), $24 (student w/ ID)
Late to the party, and short on entertainment value, the Angry Birds Universe exhibit should have stayed put in your iPhone’s app tray.
Everyone’s favourite gaming app of 2010 has been reincarnated into the real life Angry Birds Universe: The Art & Science Behind a Global Phenomenon. Having opened at the Telus World of Science earlier this month, it is slated for a six-month run extending to April 4, 2017.
Among the various Angry Birds game stations scattered throughout the exhibit, there are a number of mentally and physically challenging interactive activities. Some sections emulate the virtual game in a tangible context: visitors can target their self-designed Styrofoam block pig forts with an Angry Birds ball and slingshot, build their own handheld cars and race them on an Angry Birds Go!-inspired track, and “be the bird,” crashing into Styrofoam blocks at the end of a zipline. Other sections relate to Angry Birds in a more thematic way: a series of displays outline features of real life birds, demonstrators give regularly scheduled talks on animal constellations, and periodic signage relates the gameplay of Angry Birds to basic physics concepts.
The exhibit does provides depth to a global phenomenon that many might otherwise see as only an addictive gaming app of yesterday. A particular silver lining is the Art Studio Cave, which provides insights into the brand from its creators at Finnish company, Rovio Entertainment. Capturing the spirit of the exhibit, and the overall direction of the franchise is this quote from Sanna Lukander, Vice President of Books and Learning at Rovio:
“Learning is fun when it becomes a healthy addiction. People get so worried about kids playing games and sitting at their computers, but it’s obvious that kids are motivated by these characters and their world, so why not use it for creating a positive attitude toward learning?”
Unfortunately, this is where the positives stop. Angry Birds Universe is much shorter than some of the Science Centre’s previous exhibits, which is almost a given considering the simplistic nature of the Angry Birds game. Furthermore, at the Telus World of Science, there’s no way to pay to see only the feature exhibit, meaning visitors must pay the full admission price for the entire facility. Seeing as the rest of the Science Centre probably hasn’t changed since you were there in grade school, the $24-28 price is rather steep for what’s realistically an hour’s worth of light entertainment.
So unless you’re nine years old, and have finally saved up enough from your weekly allowance, don’t bother breaking into your “Bad Piggies” bank for this exhibit. You just might be left with some angry words for these birds when it’s all over.
