Rovio flies away from Angry Birds for all-new puzzler
With Rovio's Angry Birds hitting the billion-download mark recently, the Finnish developer has turned its attention to its next mobile game, revealed this week as Amazing Alex. No birds. No pigs. No plush toy merchandise or movie tie-ins… just yet, anway. Amazing Alex is an upgraded version of a 2011 iPad game Casey's …
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"this is the first game Rovio has taken under its wing that doesn't feature catapulted birds."
In fairness, they'd tried fifty one games before Angry Birds and they failed, commercially speaking, so wringing every possible penny out of Angry Birds does make sense of a sort. (Citation: http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/04/features/how-rovio-made-angry-birds-a-winner)
Angry Birds was Rovio's first own app
Prior to that they quite succesfully made apps for other people with greater and lesser success, but they got paid. The paltry pay of making inferior apps to spec for others is probably what motivated them to make their own game. It's really frustrating knowing what wins and being prevented from delivering it by a phenomenally stupid client. To suffer such over and again must have driven Rovio's coders near insane. I'm glad they found a way out.
Re: Angry Birds was Rovio's first own app
I quite happily make a living making apps for other people. A good going rate is about £110k a year on contract in London. It's hardly paltry. Compared to my personal apps, the best of which has only pulled in £3k over 7 months, and my figures are the reverse of yours.
Re: Angry Birds was Rovio's first own app
Just noticed you wrote "inferior" which makes my other post a bit redundant, sorry.
Re: They haven't copied
Not in the slightest.
owait...
also, thank you for triggering a major nostalgia attack. I even have the disks. Now, where can I get a floppy drive?
Re: They haven't copied
Yes, exactly that !
And if my memory is still ok, this used to run on MS-DOS. Where is my DOSBox ?
Re: They haven't copied
with a hint of where's my water, cut the rope and a few others mixed in
Re: They haven't copied
Failing that you can get the entire series from GoG.com for a few quid, probably more than you'd pay for this though.
@RayG
I've still got a floppy drive :) And a copy of T.I.M. on CD.
No, you're not getting either of them.
Re: They haven't copied
After seeing some 'Heath Robbinson' devices I used to spend hours with my Lego and Meccano sets building contraptions like this. Now my grandkids can do it on a screen. not the same though.
Yeah, sad I know.
Then I graduated to building crazy stuff out of scrap cycles.
Now I spend my spare time rebuilding old British Motorcycles, Sunbeams a speciality.
Re: They haven't copied
Yes, yes I think they have. Get Andrew Orlowski on the case, he's big on copyright and will surely see that just action is taken.
Re: They haven't copied
Which, sadly, doesn't include the original version. I have a win98 pc specifically for that version as getting the sound to work properly was a grade1 nightmare.....
Heath Robinson
The world needs more Heath Robinson contraptions. There ought to be government grants for any new construction or product brought to market that can involves a demonstrable Heath-Robinson-ness.
In fact, most of the code I write could probably be classified as Heath-Robison-esque.... :)
Re: Heath Robinson
"The world needs more Heath Robinson contraptions. There ought to be government grants for any new construction or product brought to market that can involves a demonstrable Heath-Robinson-ness."
Don't we give BAe Systems enough money as it is?
Re: Heath Robinson
@CarlC, are you agreeing with him, or are you the poor sod that got stuck maintaining his code?
Oh dear
There's nothing sadder than watching a one hit wonder try to trot out their new, more serious stuff while the crowd of drunken thirty-somethings shout "Do that one with the birds and the pigs! That was awesome!" and eventually start hurling beer bottles.
Re: Oh dear
Well, that could be a plan B.
"When new game fails stack every game item on top of each other, mix items with pigs, and add catapult with new type of birds".
fail
Ah well, at least they will go down in history as making probably the most addictive mobile game (to date)
This one has epic fail written all over it, if only because they are going to throw massive marketing at the promise of a silk purse, but punters will end up with a sows ear.
Shades of "The Great Space Race"...
which after all the hype and mysterious adverts turned out to be rubbish...
TIM
Always reminds me of 'The Great Egg Race', and Jean Michael Jarre for some reason....
The American's call Heath Robinson machines "rube goldberg", for those here who want to waste some time on youtube!
I used to love playing T.I.M when visiting my cousins in the US... but later that week Doom was released : D
The Incredible Machine series was one of my favorites from Sierra. It's rather a shame the series faded into obscurity after Contraptions (with Sierra itself fading later on). That said, there was a spinoff (Sid and Al's Incredible Toons) that took the concept to its cartoonish extreme and was still very fun and amusing. For its day, the games were also decently sophisticated (high-resolution VGA graphics) yet compact (IIRC both TIM and Incredible Toons fit on a single HD floppy). Thing was I ran out of puzzles to play, and this was before the Internet took off.
I can't imagine this one will succeed
It lacks the elements that made Angry Birds a hit:
-simple gameplay
-cute characters with cute sound effects
-good vs. evil
-gratuitous destruction
True, they were running out of themes for Angry Birds, but just stupid to abandon something in its prime. I hope they continue to make levels for the existing games.
Re: I can't imagine this one will succeed
Actually that sounds a bit like DMA Design just as the Lemmings franchise was coming to an end. They put out Grand Theft Auto while they were working on other things and things went on from there. Now if Rockstar North (as they are now) could do an in-game version of Lemmings in GTA V when that comes out...
They can't.
Even as DMA was bought by Rockstar, Psygnosis (who published the DMA-developed Lemmings) was bought by Sony. Technically, rights go with the Publisher, not with the Developer, so Sony got the rights to Lemmings, which is why you normally only see Lemmings games on PlayStation platforms. These days, Lemmings games are made for Sony by Team 17 (developers of the probably-Lemmings-inspired Worms series).
Re: I can't imagine this one will succeed
Actually, The Incredible Machine wasn't all that complicated. You get an assortment of parts to put on the field, each of which performs a specific function (for example, the mouse motor which creates rotating motion each time you bumped it), and the object is to arrange them in such a way as to achieve the goal.
And the graphics were actually pretty nice for its day. TIM2 even added a little more humor to its descriptions.
Then there was the spinoff (Sid & Al's Incredible Toons). That ticked all the remaining checkmarks. It was funny as all getup and harkened back to the classic cat-and-mouse cartoons (complete with over-the-top gags and effects).
They could release anything right now and would get a large number of downloads.
Sometimes it doesn't matter how good a product is, as long as you get the right promotion, you are sorted.
Hmm, maybe I should put a sig on here promoting my own...
T.I.M
for those feeling nostalgic, T.I.M is available on iOS. (possibly android too?) not quite as good as the original, but not bad for a stumble down memory lane.
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