PopCap Games, the creators of small-ish casual games such as Bejeweled and Plants Vs Zombies, has created a new studio to make games even smaller than those. Unpleasant Horse is one of those games.
4th & Battery is PopCap’s new small games studio, named for the Seattle, Washington intersection where the PopCap headquarters is located. The studio’s main goal is to keep the developers’ heads from exploding. No, really.
“4th & Battery is a pressure valve intended to keep our heads from exploding,” explained Ed Allard, Executive Vice President of Studios at PopCap. “The PopCap brand has become closely associated with ultra-high quality, polish and attention to detail – which is a great thing. But our standard game development process is therefore long and involved, and doesn’t really accommodate all of the creativity pumping through our collective veins. 4th & Battery gives us a way to quickly try really strange or marginal ideas, and to give our designers a safe area to hone their chops.”
Unpleasant Horse is the first fruit of this new endeavor. Players take on the role of what looks to be a very unpleasant horse indeed, killing small birds and jumping on more pleasant horses to progress through the game. Unpleasant Horse will be available later this month for free on the iPhone and iPod Touch.
My Unpleasant Horse tattoo will come shortly after.
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