The short version
Angry Birds AR: Isle of Pigs (Rovio, built with Resolution Games) launched in 2019. It placed a small island on your floor or table and had you walk around it to line up slingshot shots at pig structures — the classic Angry Birds physics, in AR. It was free to download and, per its listing and reviews, monetised with in-app purchases. As of 15 September 2026 the App Store lookup for its listing (id1456120259) returns no result in the US, UK, German or Japanese storefronts, which is what a withdrawn app looks like.
Down The Drone (KIDA Studios) is a first-person AR shooter released in 2026. The enemies — quadcopters and orbital strike drones — are anchored into your real room, street or park and attack from above. It is free, has no ads and no in-app purchases, and runs entirely offline.
Side by side
| Angry Birds AR: Isle of Pigs | Down The Drone | |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Rovio Entertainment / Resolution Games | KIDA Studios |
| Type | Tabletop physics puzzle | First-person AR shooter |
| Where the game lives | A diorama placed on a flat surface | Enemies anchored in the space around you, at head height and above |
| Threat | None — static targets | Drones approach and fire at you |
| Price | Free (with in-app purchases) | Free |
| Ads / in-app purchases | In-app purchases; reviews reported interstitial ads | None |
| Offline | Partly | Fully |
| Age rating | Everyone / 4+ (family) | 12+ |
| App Store status (15 Sep 2026) | Listing not found in US, UK, DE, JP storefronts | Live, v1.2 (22 Aug 2026) |
Two different ideas of what AR is for
Isle of Pigs used AR as a display surface. The level was a diorama; the camera let you walk around it to find an angle. That is a good use of ARKit and it made the physics feel tactile, but the room itself did not matter beyond needing a flat surface to put the island on.
Down The Drone uses the room as the level. Drones are placed relative to your actual walls and ceiling, they hold position when you look away, and they close in on you. The space you stand in changes how a wave plays — a hallway and a garden are different fights. We wrote about the design consequences of that in The Room Is the Level Design.
The business model
Isle of Pigs followed the standard free-to-play shape: free to install, then purchases to unlock content, and reviews consistently mentioned video ads between levels. On a game played in short bursts, an interstitial every few minutes is a large share of the session.
Down The Drone has no ad network, no store and no account. That is partly principle and partly performance: an AR session already pushes the camera, sensors and thermal budget hard, and an ad SDK on top of that makes the game measurably worse.
What to play instead
If you liked Isle of Pigs for the family-friendly puzzle, none of the AR shooters replace it; look for a tabletop AR puzzle instead. If you liked it because it was the first time a game used your camera and you want to see what AR on a current iPhone can do, Down The Drone is the more ambitious use of the hardware — and it is free without the catches. The free AR shooting games round-up lists the other current options.
We make Down The Drone, so read this as a comparison from someone with a stake in it. Facts about other apps and services come from their App Store listings, official pricing pages and published reviews as of 2026-09-15; listings change, so confirm anything decision-critical on the store page itself.