Show HN: I Created the Inverse of Angry Birds

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/misunderstood-pigs/id431451004?ls=1&mt=8

by ghempton • 15 years ago

625 123 15 years ago

itunes.apple.com

billybob• 15 years ago

So you're trying to protect the pigs?

thebigshane• 15 years ago

Yes, they never deserved the birds' misplaced anger to begin with.

mdaniel• 15 years ago

Here is hoping for you to have even half of the marketing juggernaut of that other pig game :-)

beatle2• 15 years ago

did you use cocos2d?

ghempton9• 15 years ago

Yup cocos2d, with a pretty thick custom level editor built on top.

xelfer2• 15 years ago

is the level editor your own or another product?

beatle2• 15 years ago

cool. good job!

joshmanders3• 15 years ago

Looks good, downloaded it to my iPhone. :)

joshmanders3• 15 years ago

It's kind of hard to drag the items, I have to zoom all the way in and try and move the items like 10 times before I get it right. Also make them drop down like they do when you hit play, because it's way to hard having to try and line them up when creating structures, due to the dropping of items making them very unstable.

aresant• 15 years ago

Awesome and hilarious concept, brilliant to garner PR since it's such a fun story.

Great iphone PR resources:

List of the top sites to contact -

http://www.altiapp.com/2011/09/ultimate-list-of-free-iphone-...

Nice presentation on mobile-app specific PR:

http://www.slideshare.net/triplepoint/pr-101-for-iphone-game...

Your story has legs - worth maybe hitting TechCrunch and the other big boys as well - good luck!

TheClassic• 15 years ago

I'm not seeing this game in the AppStore

joshmanders3• 15 years ago

Load the link in your safari on your iPod/iPad/iPhone and it will take you to it in the store.

liamkf• 15 years ago

Yeah that worked for me. Searching for the exact title in the App Store didn't return any results.

I guess their search index is not always up to date.

martingordon• 15 years ago

Looks pretty cool, downloading now. Why is it free, though? Charge a buck for it at least.

reustle• 15 years ago

I wonder if he's leaving it free to minimize the number of reasons for Rovio to go after him.

mrchess• 15 years ago

It is ad driven.

krmmalik• 15 years ago

i cant seem to access the link on my mobile device. can someone please give me the name of the game so i can search it in the app store?

oflannabhra• 15 years ago

Misunderstood Pigs

bradleyland3• 15 years ago

I hope Rovio sees this, finds it as hilarious as I did, keeps their head about them, then finds a way to work with you on developing the idea.

kmfrk• 15 years ago

Unless it's freemium, I don't see why they wouldn't find it hilarious.

mmaunder• 15 years ago

Charging or not charging for an infringing work isn't relevant. Personally I hope they give him a job with a hefty options grant.

dlss• 15 years ago

It is freemium ($3 level pack), and has admob ads

ericb2• 15 years ago

I would refer to this as a "parody" of angry birds.

RexRollman• 15 years ago

I agree but I have seen cases where companies have tried to suppress a parody. I think we are going to see Rovio is made of.

ericb2• 15 years ago

A parody is constitutionally protected free speech. Yes, they can sue regardless, but I think your leverage is higher in that scenario. I am not a lawyer. I hope the creator has spoken with one in case.

iamandrus• 15 years ago

Rovio probably won't care as long as he doesn't start profiting from the app.

blasdel2• 15 years ago

He has in-app ads of some kind, I got one cross-selling the Gilt app.

joshu• 15 years ago

Needs a bit of ux work but is pretty brilliant

bad_user• 15 years ago

Please do an Android version.

ghempton9• 15 years ago

Hopefully I will have time to get around to this someday.

fridek• 15 years ago

Few months ago a similar game was released on Android: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.rejectedgames.isla...

ghempton9• 15 years ago

Thanks for all the great feedback. This is a side project that I had been sitting on at 90% completion for months and finally got it out.

As a side note: I need to remember to not publicize newly launched apps until they have been indexed by the app store. It might not show up in the app store search until tomorrow.

JMiao• 15 years ago

did you make the artwork yourself?

ghempton9• 15 years ago

Everything was done by yours truly in Fireworks. I wrote a custom extension that I use to create both the artwork and the levels inside of Fireworks.

jtreminio2• 15 years ago

I sent the link to my ipad and opened it from there, and whala it shows up.

tankenmate2• 15 years ago

at the risk of negative karma; voilà.

dpcan• 15 years ago

It showed up in my search today.

davidtyleryork• 15 years ago

Brilliant!

mrkmcknz• 15 years ago

Is it US only? Can't find it in UK store

ghempton9• 15 years ago

Should be everywhere, maybe there is a delay.

johnnyo• 15 years ago

Some feedback:

The UI needs some work. Running on an iPhone 3GS, it felt very laggy, many of my touches didn't register correctly.

Tap to rotate is an odd concept, and combined with the lagginess above, I was always moving when I wanted to rotate, or vice versa. Maybe two fingers to rotate?

Move the advertising. Having it right on top of the playing field caused me to accidentally click it when trying to move around a block, taking me completely out of the game.

A better visual distinction between blocks I'm allowed to move, and blocks I'm not allowed to move would be nice, I spent a few minutes of the first level trying to move the block that was already there.

Otherwise, I love the concept.

ghempton9• 15 years ago

Thanks for the feedback. An iPad 2 was my primary testing device so I surely didn't give the iPhone version the UI love it needs.

logic• 15 years ago

Just an FYI: it crashes while trying to open it on my iPhone 3G (displays the splash screen, then exits to springboard.)

Love the idea, though. :)

khafra• 15 years ago

This explains a lot. If my thumbs were 1/3 their present size, moving the blocks around on my iPhone probably would have been a lot easier. I recommend increasing the area you can touch to "grab" a block by at least 50%, and adding some sort of visual indicator of the position and orientation of the block outside the thumb-occlusion. Other than that, it's a great game.

NathanKP• 15 years ago

Having it right on top of the playing field caused me to accidentally click it when trying to move around a block, taking me completely out of the game.

But possibly earning some cash if it is cost per tap. I sometimes think people who show advertising on their websites and/or apps must love tablets and phones because it is so easy to accidentally tap on an ad. I've done so many times, even though I'd normally never click an ad.

lancefisher• 15 years ago

Cool concept. Next up: multiplayer where one person plays the birds and the other plays the pigs (Rovio might have to buy your app for that).

You need to explain why the pigs took the eggs. Maybe you do in the game.

tedsuo• 15 years ago

It's not the pigs' fault eggs are delicious. :)

euccastro• 15 years ago

Concentration of eggs helps all. Extra eggs will trickle down back to the birds.

chalst• 15 years ago

Birds? Eggs? What are these egg-laying birds you speak of? They're not in the game.

Wise not to mention them, from an afraid-of-well-paid-lawyers point of view.

tokipin• 15 years ago

but who will play the role of the seesaw??

GGNH• 15 years ago

awesome stuff!

sylvinus• 15 years ago

genius idea is genius.

kwamenum86• 15 years ago

gosh i hope you don't get sued

nazar• 15 years ago

The idea sounds great! I don't have an iDevice to test it, but hell with testing, I believe my fellow HNers, and I want to wish you good luck from Turkmenistan!

YuriNiyazov• 15 years ago

E-mail me please, I am curious about costs of web development in Turkmenistan.

civilian• 15 years ago

Android plz?

bau5• 15 years ago

I don't have an iOS device to play on it but this looks great! I think this will attract Angry Birds lovers and haters alike. I imagine you'll have competitors if this takes off, so it's good that you built a real game and not a simple novelty app.

Timothee• 15 years ago

I'm growing overly tired of the success of Angry Birds, seeing it on Hipmunk.com, as a special Roku box, pushed on the Chrome Web Store, etc. so this is very welcome. Congratulations on the launch!

Cmccann7• 15 years ago

This is freaking awesome. Congrats on releasing the project Gordon!

Just played till level nine and even paid for unlocking the rest of the levels. Some feedback:

1) The game needs music. It's a little quiet after awhile, would be much better with music. 2) On a lot of the levels you don't need to do anything and you'll "win" by just pressing play. 3) Totally understand why you have the ads on in the game but sometimes on the cloud levels it gets in the way of placing blocks. 4) Sometimes the game gets stuck at the end and doesn't count up all of the points 5) Counting up the points on level with a ton of items in it takes forever 6) You should also explain the different birds and which ones are coming. Noticed some had dynamite strapped to them but didn't expect that at all. 7) On replay I really wish I had the previous blocks stay where they were.

Overall an awesome game but wanted to give you some feedback on it after I played around with it for awhile.

michaelschade• 15 years ago

Great idea and execution, love it.

Perhaps you mentioned it in the opening message and I just missed it, but...I was waiting for objects to appear that were oriented differently, and only by accident did I realize that I had to tap to rotate (I had first tried by actually doing a rotation gesture).

I'd add some note about this on the object palette in the bottom, and maybe even add a rotation gesture to turn it.

vidarh• 15 years ago

My two year old would probably love that - he sympathises with the pigs and gets upset whenever he accidentally hits one of them with the birds. Doesn't seem to care as much about the birds.

kirubakaran• 15 years ago

Perhaps because pigs are mammals and hence more closely related to him than birds?

dfuhriman• 15 years ago

This is great.

anatari• 15 years ago

Cool game and concept. Lots of fun. Now some feedback:

1) The touch logic on the blocks is frustrating for me on the iPhone. It takes me several tries to move a block. It thinks I want to scroll half the time, or doesn't register the touch with block. Maybe the block touch zone should be bigger than the block itself.

2.) Putting ads directly in the level seems distasteful to me and ruins the immersive experience. Would rather have them in-between levels or at start up.

andrewflnr• 15 years ago

Fun, but it likes to crash when loading levels. For a while it crashed when trying to go to the second level, which I fixed by force-restarting the app, and just now when reloading level 2 after a failed attempt. iPad 1, iOS 5.1.

xekul• 15 years ago

I can't stop laughing at the name of the app. It's fantastic!

alias1• 15 years ago

Depending on how Rovio take this I would love to see some form of collab (bet it partnered or purchased)

I can see a PvP multiplayer feature, one player in Angry Birds, one player in Misunderstood Pigs, phone vs phone multiplayer goodness.

langsamer• 15 years ago

Awesome idea. What did you use for the physics engine?

jaredsohn• 15 years ago

Funny seeing this within days of the iPhone version of Plants vs. Zombies adding a mode where you control the zombies. (Feature already existed in Flash version; requires in-game currency to play most of it).

esrauch• 15 years ago

The regular desktop version has a mode where you control the zombies.

mvkel• 15 years ago

Very clever! I'd rename it to something catchier though -- Pity Pigs, Sorry Pigs... something with no more than three syllables

DistortedRhymes• 15 years ago

Im downloading it now! Looks awesome! Congrats.

SickAnimations• 15 years ago

Very good first version. Quick and easy to get into gameplay. About the right level of difficulty. Thanks :)

pknerd• 15 years ago

Cool. May I know the tools you used to make it?

pbreit• 15 years ago

I'd like to see Angry Bird "right-to-left". Any hacks to make that happen?

pilap82• 15 years ago

Funny! If you need funding you can try to pitch it as "Tower defense meets Angry birds" :)

epaga• 15 years ago

This is one of those very rare moments where the idea is so funny and good that you'll probably have quite the success with the idea even if the implementation isn't the best.

But it seems like you've done a great job with the implementation as well. All the best!

instakill• 15 years ago

Please open this up on multiple Apple App stores. Not available in the South African app store.

waldr• 15 years ago

Been playing this all morning, I'd love to see the pig protection milked to the max. A fun plug would be 'how many pigs saved to date' and maybe when a certain number has been hit then for some PR you could adopt a pig - http://worldanimalfoundation.homestead.com/AdoptAPig.html

Be pretty funny to see a load of blog posts about saving pigs, due to help from players!

I've possibly had too much coffee this morning..

Luc3• 15 years ago

Those birds in the third screenshot look pretty much the same as the Angry Birds to me (I didn't compare them directly, but I don't think that's necessary anyway). You're also directly advertising this with reference to Angry Birds (see title of this post).

I'd say you're pretty much flouting basic trademark law here, and the only way for Rovio to react is to protect their trademark, or lose it. It's all the more likely if they are working on their own title from the viewpoint of the pigs - and I'd say the odds are pretty high that they are.

In addition, the idea of this being parody is not something I'd want to defend in front of a judge...

nachteilig• 15 years ago

The birds are a question of copyright, not trademark. And one doesn't lose that for failing to defend it.

starwed• 15 years ago

I don't think its that simple. Wikipedia says

>A trademark is typically a name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, image, or a combination of these elements. There is also a range of non-conventional trademarks comprising marks which do not fall into these standard categories, such as those based on color, smell, or sound.

I'd be surprised if Rovio doesn't consider the general appearance of the birds as a trademark. If you see a game in the app store represented by an angry bird like image, that's clearly going to create consumer confusion about the origin of the game.

Luc3• 15 years ago

That bird design is to Rovio what Mickey is to Disney...

iz_mani• 15 years ago

Hey ,that was funny and well done . The game lags on iphone. And yes this is a good concept of parody games.

yeahyeah12• 15 years ago

http://www.misunderstoodpigs.com

r7000• 15 years ago

If Angry Birds is Crush The Castle this is Hold Your Ground: http://www.physicsgames.net/game/Hold_Your_Ground.html. Since Hold Your Ground has been out for years I am surprised someone hasn't done this before considering the runaway success of Angry Birds.

inspiredworlds• 15 years ago

hilarious!

chefsurfing• 15 years ago

Great concept, great creativity! Bravo. If you can effectively manage the IP battle I think you have a smash success on your hands here.

djjose• 15 years ago

Awesome, a new game to play! I used to play 'Cover Orange' which had a similar inverse Angry Birds gameplay. Did you research that game before working on this?

Show HN: I Created the Inverse of Angry Birds

Related Stories