Rovio confirms Amazing Alex

NewsPublish Date 11/05/2012 - 11:48am GMT+1

Will be the company's first release outside of the Angry Birds franchise.

Angry Birds creator Rovio has confirmed that Amazing Alex will be its first release not to feature the feathered pig haters.

Amazing Alex is based on the game Casey's Contraptions, which Rovio acquired from developers Snappy Touch and Mystery Coconut.

"Working with Noel [Llopis, Snappy Touch founder] and Miguel [A. Friginal, Mystery Coconut founder] has been fantastic, and this is a game that we all fell in love with from the first play," Rovio's VP of franchise development Ville Heijari told Gamasutra.

"The gameplay is a perfect fit in our arsenal with its approachable, fun and highly addictive take on the physics puzzler genre. We are currently reworking the title to enhance it, and getting ready to re-introduce it in a true 'expect the unexpected' Rovio style launch to an even larger audience."

Casey's Contraptions had previously been released for iPad, but this has been removed form the App Store. Amazing Alex will launch this summer.

Via Develop

New stuff to check out

Comments

To add your comment, please login or register

User Comments

munkee @ Woffls

Half of your question is patronising and doesn't deserve a response.

As for the rest:
Nobody thinks that Valve invented it. They didn't. But, there were happy to create first person game experiences because it was an idea they liked.

My point was:
Quote:

Originally Posted by pblive

Well, they're not making the idea, they just bought it and they're making changes to the game befote releasing it under a different title.

Very few developers come up with originality. They tend to take other peoples ideas and make changes to the idea before releasing it as their own. A studio has come up with a game, that was a concept taken from another source (which was taken from another source, etc.. until we get to cavemen piling sticks on top of each other), and Rovio have bought the game from them. They'll rebrand the game and sell it on. Then, another pile of developers will take the idea and sell it on as theirs..

Quote:

Originally Posted by Woffls

Ahhh nothing says creative bankruptcy like a one-hit-wonder who can't be bothered to make their own games even when they've got a pile of cash to spend.
Reply

Creative bankruptcy is merely a presumption. Perhaps its a shrewd business move. If you want to look at it from a different angle, everybody steals ideas (as I mentioned before) and with the money Rovio have they could quite easily have just ripped off Snappy Touch's game, repackaged it and credited nobody.

Instead:
Quote:

Working with Noel [Llopis, Snappy Touch founder] and Miguel [A. Friginal, Mystery Coconut founder] has been fantastic, and this is a game that we all fell in love with from the first play,

It appears as if they have kept the original developers involved. That was nice, wasn't it?

Posted 15:48 on 11 May 2012

Woffls @ munkee

Narbacular Drop was an original idea that caught Valve's eye, so they employed the entire team to make something more substantial than just a proof of concept.

Casey's Contraptions is an unoriginal idea that Rovio are essentially buying because it fits with their target market's attention span.

What is the "first person genre", and who thinks that Valve invented it? I don't see what point you're trying to make.

Posted 15:22 on 11 May 2012

draytone

Valve did champion the creators of Portal though, and it was originally built on an engine and using software they developed.

Posted 14:01 on 11 May 2012

pblive

But this is basically sounding like they will be buying a game from a company (Casey's Contraptions) and then adding some different graphics and levels and releasing it under a different name.

Not only that, but the game was already a riff on Incredible Machine, which was out ages ago.

Considering how different Angry Birds was, it's just a disappointment that they're not coming up with the ideas themselves.

Posted 13:57 on 11 May 2012