Rovio launches new franchise Amazing Alex
Thursday, July 12, 2012 3:48 PM
Rovio, the firm behind the phenomenally successful mobile game Angry Birds, has launched its next franchise, Amazing Alex.
After racking up over a billion downloads with its addictive pig killing platform, the Finnish studio will be hoping that this latest effort can garner the same level of interest from Android and iOS gamers. Although let's be honest, even half this amount of downloads would still be incredible.
New audiences are also being kept in mind with PC, Mac and Windows Phone versions to come at a later date, Rovio revealed on Twitter.
Unlike Angry Birds, Amazing Alex is actually based on a game called Casey's Contraptions, after Rovio bought the IP to the title from Snappy Touch and Mystery Coconut.
Commenting on the acquisition, Rovio's vice-president 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.
"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."
Keeping true to the original, Amazing Alex revolves around the premise of creating a Rube Goldberg machine - a complicated device created to carry out a simple task. You know, the kind of thing that Wallace and Gromit use to make toast in the morning.
However, plenty of astute gamers have pointed out that Casey's Contraptions itself is actually predated by The Incredible Machine games designed and coded by Kevin Ryan and produced by Jeff Tunnell in the early 1990s. Not to mention that the idea of a Rude Goldberg machine or Heath Robinson contraption, as they are known in the UK, first originated from eccentric cartoons drawn in the early 1900s.
Well if the Rude Goldberg machine ain't broke, don't fix it.