Rovio will launch racing themed Angry Birds Heikki on June 18

Rovio's launching yet another Angry Birds franchise and this time, the game is tied in with Finnish Formula 1 race driver, Heikki Kovalainen. According to The Next Web, the company has remained quiet on this deal and the game can be expected on the 18th of June. The difference between this game and the other Angry Birds games (aside from the racing theme, of course), is that this game will be web only. Despite the silence from Rovio, they have teased a "webgame" partnership, which would release later this summer. They have set up a mini-site for Angry Birds Heikki, which is equipped with buttons for sharing information to the social networks, most likely so the game gets some buzz on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Warming up...

Rovio teased a little bit of what we can expect from the game by saying, "The webgame, which will feature fun Angry Birds game levels with a racing theme in addition to other bespoke content, launching later in the summer." Kovalainen in the meantime, is wearing a recognizable Angry Birds themed racing helmet already. In addition to this, Rovio has begun selling limited edition merchandise on its website (which basically consists of three hats). So come June 18th, we'll have yet another Angry Birds game to play, though this time we won't be able to play on our smart devices. We're also guessing that it will be back to regular Angry Birds gameplay and not, obviously, any elements from Angry Birds Space.

Rovio has enjoyed a fair amount of success with its Angry Birds games, and no matter how much we complain that the games are getting repetitive and boring, they're still able to get the downloads they want. Earlier this month, the company reached 1 billion downloads of its Angry Birds games, which includes all the various franchises that Angry Birds has i.e. regular Angry Birds, Angry Birds Rio, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Space etc across all the platforms that the games are available on. Although the company didn't specify who the one billionth downloader was or which game and platform gave them the one billionth download, they did show their gratitude by saying, "We are so thankful to all of our fans for their support, and we can’t wait for them to see what we have coming up," and releasing a 21 second video dedicated to their fans. Will you play Angry Birds Heikki? Let us know in the comments section below.