Over the weekend, you may or may not have heard that Rovio still isn't content to simply beat a dead horse. The developer is intent on pummeling it until it liquefies into a creamy equine smoothy, posting the following teaser for yet another spin-off for Angry Birds, in which the avian menace is about to go medieval.
Obviously, people are still launching the flightless birds at swine, otherwise Rovio wouldn't still be hawking variations on the same old game time and time again. Admittedly, the team up with Star Wars was clever marketing, and Angry Birds Space offered enough of a change in gameplay to keep things interesting. But the concept to bring the game to the dark ages is a slap in the face to the game to which Angry Birds and Rovio owes its success.
Once upon a time, before free-to-play app games kept everyones' noses buried in their smartphone, flash games were the defacto choice for gaming on a budget, and not long before Angry Birds was brought onto the world, there was (and still is) a very similar game called Crush the Castle. The game thrust players back into the time of knights who sat at round tables, feudal lords, all that, and tasked them with using a trebuchet to hurl rocks at an enemy castle, and take out all the troops contained therein. Sound familiar yet?
The free flash game from Armor Games first released in April of 2009. Someone at Rovio took notice of the game's simple yet surprisingly deep and addictive gameplay, tweaked the controls a smidge, and gave it all a cutesy makeover with a new name. More than half a year later, Angry Birds released, launching the Rovio empire that now has balls big enough to reject a buyout from Zynga to the tune of over $2 billion. All on the strength of someone else's game design.
Now, before you say that Crush the Castle was a ripoff from another game, Castle Clout, keep in mind that not only did the team cite Clout as an inspiration, they also did the respectful and decent thing that so many other developers seem to "forget," which was to actually ask for permission to use the ideas from Castle Clout to develop Crush the Castle, something Rovio never bothered to do. Or, maybe the letter just got lost in the mail.
In this day and age, ripping off other game designs seems to be rampant, and unfortunately unacceptable, particularly with apps, where enforcement is few and far between.
Rovio may not have learned originality, but the studio is at least embracing the proper way to do things. In 2012, the company bought out the rights to Casey's Contraptions, and re-branded it as Amazing Alex.
With the company now set to release a game that will resemble its inspiration now more than ever, Rovio owes it to Armor to make good on its past actions before sending the birds back in time.