Best Fiends, devilish game, Launched Exclusively on iOS by Former Rovio Execs
The Best Fiends devilish game has finally been released. It comes from two of the top former executives from Rovio, Andrew Stalbow and Petri Järvilehto, who between them have helped develop games that drew more than 2 billion downloads. That billion with a B.
Their game developing company called Seriously launched a little over a year ago and was provided with $2.35 million in seed funding from Upfront Ventures in the States and Sunstone Capital in Denmark. Being that this was the guys behind the Angry Birds and Max Payne franchising and merchandising, it got a few peoples' attention in the gaming industry.
Move on a year and now the game is finally out exclusively for the iOS platform. The game is a puzzle-based challenge built around colorful characters which is evident from the web site and the game it supports. The backgrounds are a lush green and the puzzle pieces are also suitably colorful. Lots of animation and movement to keep things interesting for players of almost all ages.
The playable world is called Minutea where the happy creatures live happily until a nearby mountain is struck by a comet. The usually peaceful slugs go through a transformation into scary little monsters who capture the parents from all over Minutea and scamper away up the mountainside. It is left up to the kids, the little house mites, to make their way up the mountain and try to save their parents from the evil monsters.
See the official trailer:
Effective Marketing
The developers see the game and the company as developing a long term franchise or serious of franchises. They hired Heitor Pereira who composed the score for Despicable Me to compose the background music for the game. They're also launching a serious of animated shorts on a YouTube channel. The latter idea if possible taken from the “out takes” used in Pixar Animation productions where characters make supposed “mistakes”. The animated shorts will surely create a greater following for the colorful characters and their upcoming battle to be fought.
Future Plans
The team at Seriously are aiming at what they terms “casual plus” games which can be dipped into when someone has a spare few minutes as was the case with the Angry Birds series of releases. They intend to create durable franchises with new releases and adventures to follow. They also seem prepared for a long drawn out battle, as the mites in their first release have to do, in order to help establish a long-lasting gaming brand with consumers.
No word on an Android or Windows Phone version of Best Fiends but hopefully their plan for gaming dominance will include cross-platform action as well.
Executives at Seriously have said that they saw what Marvel did with comics and Disney achieved with cartoons. They feel that it is a good period to be a creator of content and are positive about the future of mobile gaming.
