We mentioned yesterday that we believed that Rovio had bought the rights to Casey’s Contraptions. While neither the original developer or Rovio could confirm it yesterday, today we have gotten official word from Rovio that this was indeed the case.
Rovio’s VP of Franchise Development, Ville Heijari commented on our story from yesterday “We can confirm that we have acquired all rights to Casey’s Contraptions IP from Snappy Touch and Mystery Coconut. 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”.
Ville further commented on what makes Casey’s Contraptions a perfect fit for the Rovio brand. “Working with Noel and Miguel has been fantastic, and this is a game that we all fell in love with from the first play. The gameplay is a perfect fit in our arsenal with its approachable, fun and highly addictive take on the physics puzzler genre.”
We also asked Noel Llopis, the developer half of the games creators and the face behind Snappy Touch how this deal happened. He commented “We didn’t create Casey’s Contraptions with any thoughts of ever selling it. We just concentrated on making the best game we could and infuse it with as much personality as possible. The fact that Rovio came along and wanted to buy it was a happy accident that happened along the way. We’re really excited to see it get a second chance and to have it reach a much larger audience than we could have ever dreamed of.”
It will be interesting to see what changes Rovio makes to the excellent game. Will they keep the innovative sharing features (in Casey’s Contraptions, you could share your solutions, many times very unique, with other players)? Will the art style change? Will it be simplified or more complex? What about crossovers — will we see Angry Birds show up in the game? All questions we’ll have to wait to find out. As the game gets closer to release, we will undoubtedly find out more.
Expect Rovio to release the game for iOS and Android this summer, with other platforms to follow after that.
And now that Casey’s Contraptions in the capable hands of Rovio, what’s next for Snappy Touch? Again, Noel comments “I’m working on my games full time. I haven’t decided what my next game will be yet. I do know that it will be focused primarily on creativity and player expression, just like Casey’s Contraptions or Flower Garden. At the same time, it will be quite different from those games. That seems to be a theme with me so far: After doing one game, even if it’s successful, there’s a lot less creative challenge to make something very similar, so I rather move on and explore something different.”
For a look back at what was, here’s the excellent gameplay trailer from the original Casey’s Contraptions. Now that the game has been removed from the store, it will have to do to hold you over.
We’ll let you know as soon as we find out more about this, the next game from Rovio.
About: Confirmed: Rovio’s First Post-Angry Birds Game is Casey’s Contraptions is a post from 148Apps
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The iPhone is packed with all sorts of sensors: GPS, gyroscope, facial recognition (camera), and more. It also has a fairly decent camera. Triggertrap combines the features in this powerful piece of equipment to set up automatic triggers for the iPhone camera. Users can set up some interesting automatic triggers with Triggertrap, like “take 50 pictures over 10 minutes” or “take a picture every 200 meters.”
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The aim of the game is to create words from letters which float around the screen. Drag the letters together, tap with two fingers and watch the word vanish and gain points. That’s fundamentally all there is to it. As the player progresses and they gain more points, so the levels increase and the speed of new tiles appearing increases. It’s game over once 25 tiles co-exist on the screen but most fast thinkers won’t have to worry about this for a little while.
There’s been a major update for the Google+ app and it’s finally looking pretty stunning.
The first LEGO Harry Potter game deviated from predictability with its controls. At a time when virtual d-pads were seen as the best option for such games, it used finger taps for movement and gestures for casting spells. A moment’s practice ensured that it was a great method that worked intuitively and was enjoyable to put into action. Unfortunately, LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 has reverted to using a virtual d-pad and buttons on the right hand side which affect spell casting and jumping. It works but it’s far from as entertaining as the original game. It borders on clumsy during busy sequences. 
Starbunker Guardians 2 is a sci-fi military take on the popular tower defense genre. Players place various space soldiers and vehicles with various weapons and armaments around different maps in an attempt to keep the advancing alien forces from breaching the bunkers in each level. These buildings that the player’s troops are defending are located at the end of paths of trenches that increase in complexity with each level.
The individual visual elements in Guardians 2 are all top notch, however there is a stitched together quality about how they are all combined. The character models and animations are all very unique and varried, but the background environments seem a little bland and muted by comparison. The basic tower defense gameplay doesn’t vary much from level to level and the enemies don’t offer much variation either. While they are different enough to create some strategic challenges, enemy types often become repetitive, showing up several times in the same level. This becomes especially bothersome during the game’s longer levels which can sometimes last up to 30 waves.
No doom and gloom for the pygmies this time around. At least, not on a global scale. The Pocket God Comics app is getting an update (or rather just got one by the time this ends up being readable) including the 16th issue and a fairly major tweaking to the store’s interface.
Brainssss is a Real Time Strategy (RTS) style zombie game where the player controls swarms of zombies in a zombie apolocapyse. The game is unique and I absolutely love games with this type of control scheme on the iPad.
As an added bonus, the player occasional unlocks comics. They’re just humorous stories with a few frames of art. The first one I unlocked was about a wife that couldn’t tell her husband was a zombie because he was still just sitting and starring at the TV when she came home.
Gameloft are back with the biggest entry in their console-style FPS N.O.V.A. franchise yet, and I mean that literally: N.O.V.A. 3 is 1.57 GB of FPS action for iOS. Make sure to have some free space handy.
N.O.V.A. 3 is definitely a looker. The details and visual effects are among some of the best on iOS. The game may not look as clean as 
N.O.V.A. 3‘s audience is clear: it’s for the FPS fan who wants a big, console-style game on their iPhone or iPad, and is willing to tolerate some control issues in order to get that experience. It can feel corny at times with the way it shamelessly borrows elements from bigger, more established titles, but a lot of work has clearly been put into this to make it work as best as it can on mobile.