Modern Archives - Intensive Gaming Diary

A Book About Rovio and Angry Birds

Posted on February 23, 2026 by Viljami

The blog post right here is about a book about Angry Birds. The name of the book is The Slingshot Formula and it has been written by Pascal Clarysse. One reason for me to start reading this book was the matter that Rovio, the developer of Angry Birds, is a Finnish gaming company which is very much my dear home country. Read along as I briefly describe how the story of Angry Birds was told in this book that I finished reading just a while ago,

The book tells us readers a story of three young men, later formed to Rovio Entertainment, that take part in a mobile game development contest back in 2003. They all study then in Helsinki University of Technology (that later in 2010 became Aalto University as many big universities were combined). They actually come up with several games. Angry Birds is actually their 52nd game when it gets released back in December of the year 2009.

Angry Birds is a game that anyone can play. It might be a casual game. The developers wanted to make the game as easy to get into as possible. Then they achieved something with the game-play that had the players hooked. Angry Birds is a very popular game. It made into a worldwide pop culture icon. This was seen when there were huge collaborations with NASA and Lucasfilms Star Wars. There was eventually a movie and many other products that featured Angry Birds bird character. One popular product was a red pillow that featured the bird character of the game. Finally, in 2023, Sega acquired Rovio with a deal of 1 billion dollars.

I read the book. I liked it. With all this about a great Finnish game I have to be honest and tell you that I have never played any of Angry Birds games. I am not a huge fan. That goes to all mobile games for me. But if considered that there is a book written about a Finnish mobile game development company I might pick a book like that and just read it. I did like the book. I can recommend it to you if you are into startup companies and if you maybe want to try something like this by yourself also.

I found this book from this huge book store in Helsinki. I don’t want to advertise the place but it is my favorite book store since it has such a large selection of books to choose from. As I bought this book I also picked a book about this food delivery company Wolt and another book that was about artificial intelligence. The Slingshot Formula does cost 25 euros. It is written in English and that is the language that my copy also has been written in. It’s nice to have some language skills, isn’t it? You could probably seek it from a library if you are into borrowing books. There might also be a possibility to read this book as an electric copy.

The book is somewhat lengthy. It has a bit over 300 pages. Pascal Clarysse describes the main characters in the book with a nice detail and shares soem knowledge about different roles that these people had with Rovio and Angry Birds. There were many professionals involved from graphics design and programming all the way to musicians and also some financial specialists that made this phenomenon of the icon of Angry Birds as successful as could have been possible. Angry Birds are today known in all corners of the planet Earth and even beyond it. They actually did send an Angry Birds themed pillow into a NASA space station. Today Angry Birds is a very well-known brand and an icon.

First Finished Game of This Year (Uncharted 4)

Posted on January 18, 2026 by Viljami

Uncharted 4 is now the first game that I have finished in the year 2026. It is actually a PlayStation exclusive. It was first released in 2016. I have to say that it still looks very nice. I especially enjoyed the scenery and some effects and use of light in this games graphical content. It took me a bit over 16 hours to complete. I didn’t play this came so intensely and it took me about three weeks to finish this game. The game was developed by Naughty Dog that you might remember making some Crash Bandicoot games for PS1 in the 90s. You might also remember this game studio from titles like Jak series for PS2 and The Last of Us series for some more modern gaming consoles.

What do I have to say about Uncharted 4 after finishing it? You cannot say that this game would be a very easy one. Some parts of it are difficult. At times it seems to be some kind of a wall climbing simulator. It might be hard to find the path to follow to advance in the game. There is some shooting elements. You do have a good selection of shooting weapons. Also you get to think about some stealth attacking tactics. Sometimes it is easier to take out an enemy or two silently so you don’t alarm all of them. You get to shoot with weapons like rocket launcher and sniper rifle and of course there does exist these mandatory shooting weapons like a hand gun and an assault rifle. There is plenty of shooting weapons to choose from.

Also the story of this game keeps you hooked to the game all the way to the ending. The characters are detailed very nicely and their relationships to each other are described entertainingly. You can also see some scenes of Crash Bandicoot in a form of a mini game as different characters play Crash Bandicoot on a PS1 during the game.

I am not a huge fan of Uncharted series. Uncharted 4 was still a nice game to finish. I picked it up because it was available for a cheap price of around 10 to 15 euros as a used copy for my PS4. This is also actually the first game of the series that I have completed. I think Naughty Dog made a good game back in 2016 and it was very enjoyable.

This was actually also the first game that I finished from the pile of PS4 games that I did write a blog post about last month. I have to once again be very honest and tell you that I am not going to try to finish all of these PS4 games. I think my focus has changed a bit from what I had earlier in my mind. I have bought many new games and once again I am in a situation that I have lots of games that I would like to play. These games include Silent Hill f, Metroid Prime 4, Killing Floor III, Shinobi – Art of Vengeance and even some more games that are piled somewhere in my collection of video games that are waiting to get played.

So, this blog post was mostly about how I have started my gaming year. It has been over three weeks since posted last time. It was time for a new post. I hope you all (my readers) have a very nice year. There are many games going to be released soon that I am waiting to get to play. Now I am going to concentrate on playing some Shinobi since I already spent an hour playing it today. I bought it for my Xbox Series X for 30 euros as a digital copy.

Finding The Right Difficulty Level

Posted on December 13, 2025 by Viljami

At times it can be hard to find the right difficulty level. Especially when you are trying to find an interesting new game to play. Some games are basically harder than others. Some offer many types of difficulty level. Some are just way easier to play than some others. Also the matter that you have actually played a type of a certain game can make it harder or easier for you to get into a game.

Basically most games are trying to get you hooked. They are easy to get into but hard to master. This does apply to most video games but maybe not every one of them since there are many ways to approach this matter of difficulty level and adjusting it just so that it fits your playing skills. Of course you will learn a lot especially when you are starting to play a game.

If we consider a game like Dark Souls you are constantly trying to beat a part of the game. It is a hard game. And it takes many times and a lot of repeating to try to master the game. Some games approach this difficulty issue in a somewhat different way. We can actually talk about something like a learning curve. If a game has a steep learning curve it takes a lot of time to get into. Some games have a gentle learning curve so that it is easier to start getting into this kind of a game.

You can talk about learning curves while having a conversation about any type of a thing you are trying to learn. I think I first discovered it while I was still studying my computer science degree. We were dealing with some PHP programming frameworks and you could say that one framework would have a steep learning curve while some other might have a more gentle learning curve. There were options, we were discussing about what framework we should use for a project, like Laravel, Symfony and CodeIgniter. We actually went with Symfony after all and that was the tool we were using in that project back in 2015.

Actually programming and writing have many things in common. I find writing to be a lot easier. I guess it really is a matter of how much time you do spend practicing your actual skills. I have always enjoyed thinking about design issues while developing software of any sort. Of course are talking right now about hobby projects in programming or maybe some projects that a student of this field would come across while studying. I am not a person that really actually enjoys writing software. As you might have figured, already, I do enjoy writing and I do enjoy it a lot. You can say that it is easy and it comes naturally for me.

If you check the featured image of this blog post you can see my new keyboard. This keyboard is “Ducky One 3 TKL RGB”. It didn’t cost so much as I bought from a “black friday” sale deal. I like this keyboard and it looks cool also. I usually do play with a game pad while I play on my Windows 11 PC. I use my new keyboard mainly for writing blog posts or any social media content. I am also active in some discussion forums. This is currently not so popular but I somewhat enjoy staying active on that front also.

Lets get back to where we started. We were talking about how to choose a difficulty level. Many games are designed in a way that you first start with some difficulty level and then you advance and eventually you get to a state in which you are trying to beat the game and try to finish it so you can move on to the next game that you have in your gaming backlog. It can add a great value to a game if it is possible to play it over again with a tougher difficulty level. This actually makes you want to spend some more time with playing this certain game.

It can be at times tough to try to find a game that you can really spend tens, or maybe even hundreds, of hours playing. You go from actually trying to learn the basics of some game to just concentrating on it. Then one day you check the timer of that game and you might be a bit surprised to find actually how much time you have spent. This is actually a state that I like to call something like a “flow” state. You just forget everything else and keep playing for some hours forgetting all the matters that do sometimes bother your mind.

I myself have been trying to find something nice to play this week. I started with these games I mentioned in the last blog post and the game that I chose to play was God of War (PS4). I started with the easiest difficulty level but soon found it to be too easy. I figured that this game wasn’t a right game for this moment. So, I went to my PS2 library and chose to play Flatout 2. I played it for about five hours. I actually started also playing Zelda – Tears of the Kingdom but I got stuck in the beginning and gave up. Yesterday I picked up WRC 7. I played it also today on my Windows 11 PC.

So, it can at times be hard to find a game that offers you as a gamer a proper challenge and you get to adjust also your chosen game’s difficulty level. Lets hope everyone finds a nice game this weekend that they can really enjoy! We will get back to some gaming content next time I decide it is a time for a new update or just when I feel like writing some more content to this blog.