Rovio has finally released the long-awaited official sequel to the original Angry Birds mobile game. Since the first title saw phenomenal success on the iOS App Store, the game has gone on to amazing heights. With several official movie tie-ins, including the popular Star Wars titles, Angry Birds is the ultimate success story of the mobile app world. And now, Angry Birds 2 is available to download.

The game retains the key features, in that you fling birds with a catapult in an attempt to destroy blocks and kill green pigs. However, it does have some new features. Some levels now have multiple stages to complete, and you have to choose which bird to launch next. You can challenge other players and there are even more magic spells too, to help you complete difficult levels. As always, there are plenty of pig bosses to wipe out.

It’s free to download and has the expected in-app purchases. Download the app from the Play Store.

You can watch the official gameplay trailer here, if the embedded player doesn’t work, head on over to the YouTube page:

It seems an age since Angry Birds first rose to prominence as the best-selling mobile game going. After countless spin-offs and movie tie-ins, it’s about to get its first proper sequel. Rovio announced in a blog post this morning that Angry Birds 2 will officially launch on July 30th.

With 3 billion game downloads, millions of fans across the globe, multiple mashups and spin-offs, collaborations with A-list celebrities and much more, we’re really proud that Angry Birds is the mother of all mobile game apps. And now we’re proud to announce the mother of all sequels – Angry Birds 2!

Rovio hasn’t announced exactly what to expect or which platforms it’ll be available on, but it does say that it will make its way to “app stores worldwide” in two weeks, suggesting that it will almost certainly be available on the most popular platforms: Android and iOS.

Hit the Angry Birds 2 website to sign up and be notified as soon as it’s available. In the mean time, you can grab a bunch of the more popular Angry Birds titles for free, or just $1 in Rovio’s iOS sale.

Rovio has a lot in the works. The Finnish-game maker last week released Angry Birds Epic, an RPG-style game and a first for the series, and later this year Rovio will release Angry Birds Stella led by the lady bird in the saga.

On top of all that, Rovio is announcing something they’ve been working on with Hasbro: Angry Birds Transformers. The latest title in the series will be like Angry Birds Star Wars, another Hasbro partnership for Rovio, combining the iconic gameplay with characters that resemble those from the movies.

From 9to5Toys.com:

We have some solid Android game/app deals today as part of Amazon’s Free App of the Day Greatest Hits deals. The deal brings some solid titles like Cut the Rope, SwiftKey, Angry Birds and Shazam Encore, all for free.

Android: Cut the Rope: FREE (Reg. $1) Android: SwiftKey: FREE (Reg. $4) Android: Angry Birds: FREE (Reg. $1) Android: Shazam Encore: FREE (Reg. $5) Android: World of Goo: FREE (Reg. $3) Android: CalenGoo: FREE (Reg. $3) Android: Jamie Oliver’s 20-Minute Meals: FREE(Reg. $8) Android: Paper Camera: FREE (Reg. $2) Android: Sprinkle: FREE (Reg. $2) Android: Drawing Pad: FREE (Reg. $2) Kindle: PAC-MAN HD: FREE (Kindle Edition)