Shakira’s new Love Rocks game with Rovio will have … no birds

Rovio teased more tidbits about the mobile game it’s working on with pop star Shakira. And the title coming from the maker of Angry Birds will have no birds in it.

Shakira revealed in a video that her new game is Love Rocks. In the meantime, the pop star is appearing as a character in an Angry Birds Friends tournament and in Angry Birds 2. This shows that the trend toward celebrities in games — which can help draw more attention and reduce user acquisition costs — is alive and well since the debut of Glu’s Kim Kardashian: Hollywood in 2014.

It won’t be easy to succeed in an increasingly crowded celebrity game market, and that’s why the move away from Angry Birds is interesting. Love Rocks is a new puzzle game, co-created by Rovio and Shakira, featuring a “drop 3” game mechanic that has been in development at Rovio for two years. It debuts October 15 in the app stores.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1&v=TWgsyVVsYBU

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.