PopCap goes 'wacky' and 'experimental' with Unpleasant Horse

by Steven Mostyn - Apr 6 2011, 12:42

These days, when it comes to videogame variety, there are so many specific genre categories that ‘unique’ and ‘original’ creations are fast becoming something of a rarity.

That being said, renowned videogame developer PopCap Games is looking to stop that trend by stepping outside the realm of the established, the expected, and the normal via its new indie offshoot ‘4th & Battery’.

“4th & Battery is a pressure valve intended to keep our heads from exploding,” outlined Ed Allard, PopCap’s head of studios in a statement.

“The PopCap brand has become closely associated with ultra-high quality, polish, and attention to detail—which is a great thing,” he added. “But our standard game-development process is therefore long and involved and doesn’t really accommodate all the creativity pumping through our collective veins.”

According to Allard, the new indie label allows PopCap to hone “really strange or marginal ideas” that would otherwise be lost to the studio’s internal filters.

It also enables the company to cast its net into more daring waters in search of the next big casual hit (think Angry Birds, for example)… but without necessarily sullying its established corporate identity.

4tt & Battery’s first offering will be a free-to-download App Store creation called Unpleasant Horse, which can be viewed in trailer form by clicking below.

Little is currently know about the game, except it will apparently involve said unpleasant flying steed beating other flying horses and birds to death before feeding them into a meat grinder. We kid you not.

Does it look original and unique? Maybe. Does it look wacky and experimental when compared to PopCap creations such as Peggle and Bejeweled? Definitely.

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