Yesterday, the Finnish Rovio launched Sugar Blast worldwide. The game is based on the original IP, but its mechanics are identical to the gameplay of the latest Angry Birds title.
What kind of game?
Sugar Blast is a tap—to-match puzzle game for iOS and Android. The player touches a group of balls of the same color to make them disappear.
As mentioned above, this gameplay completely repeats that of Angry Birds: Dream Blast. The visual style of Sugar Blast also evokes associations, though not with Rovio games, but with Candy Crush from King.
You can verify this by the gameplay video:
How was it launched?
The game has been in softlonch since January of this year. In eight months, it has been installed on mobile devices 150 thousand times. Her earnings for the same time amounted to $200 thousand, according to Sensor Tower.
Just in January, Angry Birds: Dream Blast was released. That is, Rovio released two games with identical mechanics in just one year.
Dream Blast had a successful launch, it spurred revenue growth of the Rovio gaming division. In its first quarter, it earned €6.9 million. The studio focused on this several times in the report for the period.
It was probably the success of Dream Blast that influenced Rovio’s desire to release Sugar Blast. And yet the novelty may not be so profitable.
Why?
The most successful IP for Rovio is Angry Birds. Since 2009, no studio title unrelated to its main franchise has even come close to the financial performance of Angry Birds. It is still unknown whether a new game with the original IP will be able to earn well. Even if, according to the mechanics, this is a carbon copy project from the previous game about “angry birds”.
Obviously, the second tap-to-match game is needed by Rovio to overcome the financial crisis faster. Rovio took a big step towards getting out of it by releasing Dream Blast for Angry Birds fans. And with the help of Sugar Blast, they expect to occupy a new niche for themselves.
As Alex Pelletier-Norman, head of the gaming division, told VentureBeat: “Now we have two games that, despite the same core mechanics, successfully coexist in our portfolio, because they are aimed at different audiences.”
The idea of Sugar Blast was to create an attractive visual style and present it to an even wider audience in a game with already proven gameplay.
Head of the Rovio gaming Division
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