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Rovio's Amazing Alex arrives on Android and iOS July 12th, bosses everywhere weep for lost productivity (video)
It's finally happening: after roughly two and a half years, Rovio Mobile is weaning itself off of its addiction to avians. The company's first non-bird title in what feels like an eternity, Amazing Alex, will be reaching the official stores for both Android and iOS come July 12th. Strictly speaking, Rovio is taking something of a shortcut to bringing this Incredible Machine-style puzzler to market: it bought the rights to Casey's Contraptions and enlisted the developers, Miguel Friginal and Noel Llopis, to bring the title into the Rovio family. While that means it's not quite as fresh as it could be, the game has already piqued our interest and could be exposed to many (many, many) more players. While we wait, we'll pour one out for the managers and supervisors bound to lose hours of work from staff trying to finish just one more level.
Rovio's Amazing Alex arrives this week
Rovio has obviously had a ton of success (the most success on the App Store, arguably) with Angry Birds, but the company hasn't done much outside of that brand since it launched. That's all going to change later on this week, when Amazing Alex arrives as the first non-Angry Birds followup from the Finnish game developer. We'll get to find out just how much of Amazing Alex is actually original. The game was released on the App Store last year as Casey's Contraptions, a game which Rovio purchased whole hog from its creators. Casey's Contraptions offered up a lot of Rube Goldberg-esque fun, as well as a deep and powerful level creation and sharing system, so we'll see just how much of that Rovio kept, and what the company developed for themselves. Amazing Alex should be out this Thursday on the App Store, and you can see a launch trailer below.
Rovio rebranding Casey's Contraptions as "Amazing Alex"
We're hearing a little more every day about Rovio's next big mobile title. Originally, we thought that the game would be a truly original release, but that's not quite the case: The company has instead bought the rights to Casey's Contraptions, a really excellent iOS title that came out last year, and now Rovio CEO Mikael Hed says it's going to rebrand the property as "Amazing Alex." Other than the name, however, it sounds like Rovio's keeping the Rube Goldberg simulator mostly the same. Hopefully they will include the great multiplayer social system that was originally built for it. Casey's Contraptions co-creator Noel Llopis has also put up a blog post explaining his side of the deal with Rovio, and he says he and Miguel Friginal won't be involved in development of the game going forward at all. They never expected to sell the property, but when Rovio came along with "an offer we couldn't refuse," they gave it up. Llopis said he expects big things for the game: Sites who didn't cover Casey's Contraptions at all have already mentioned Amazing Alex, so Rovio's big app machine is already working its magic. Llopis also says the Rovio deal will allow him a lot of creative freedom going forward. He's not interested in building a company of his own, and says money won't even be a consideration for his next title. That, at least, is great. Rovio might have earned the ire of some developers for their overwhelming App Store success with Angry Birds, but in this case, it sounds like they made a smart move with a good title that will leave everyone involved happy. Thanks, Mikko!
