Angry Chickens makes fans of Angry Birds angry
Angry Chickens is blasting its way to the top of the App Store charts, proving once again that one path to iOS gaming riches is:
- Create run-of-the-mill game with plenty of pay-off
- Include birds
- Make birds cute
- Polish game until it squeaks
Whether or not you bother with the fourth of those will depend on whether you want your game to be dismissed immediately or bob about in the charts for months.
But Angry Chickens has drawn ire, because it’s such a rip-off of Angry Birds, except, you know, it isn’t. Yes, it involves irritating cartoon birds and also has a title quite clearly designed to confuse people. And, yes, it has physics-oriented destruction-based gameplay. But Angry Chickens is actually a rip-off of Siege Hero, which is a 3D version of Angry Birds, which is a clone of Crush the Castle, an artillery game by the Siege Hero guys, which itself is effectively an online (now also iOS) and advanced take on ancient Apple II game Artillery, which was probably based on a BASIC game also called Artillery.
Clear?
This blogpost is based on a blogpost by Silas Q. Potrizeem back in 2007, which was in turn based on a seminal presentation by Chris Crawford last century…
Only the other day I was predicting Angry Eggs, a spin-off from the soon to be relaunched Dizzy series. Seems like the chicken came first…
Damn. Thank you. Ever since Angry Birds hit big I’ve been trying to figure out where I’d played the style of game before, and Crush The Castle is it.