Norway's Megapop Announce First Game


    When we received a press release with the title Trolls vs. Vikings I originally thought it would news about something other than a new games developer announcing the release date of their first game. I thought it was going to be about recent unpleasent news from another corner of the gaming industry, so you can imagine my relief upon reading of a fun new game that will be out soon.

    I thought it was going to be regarding mobile games maker and publisher King’s trademarking of the word ‘Candy’, their current attempt to trademark the word ‘Saga’ and their pre-emptive move against Stoic, an indie games developer and makers of The Banner Saga, in sending a Notice of Opposition letter, blocking them from trademarking their own game’s name. Apparently you can file to trademark a general word and then stop other people using that wordin their titles before you even have ownership, that surprised me. As did King’s supposition that people would confuse their titles, for some reason they seem to believe that their garish Bejeweled clone ‘Candy Crush Saga’ could easily be mixed up with a tile based strategy game based on the Vikings and Norse mythology.

    Thankfully it wasn’t about King and their loathsome behaviour, instead it seems there’s a new mobile games developer in town called Megapop and they’ve appeared to announce the release date of their first game, which just so happens to be called Trolls vs. Vikings. So that’s all cleared up.

    Oslo based Megapop describe the game as “a super tight tower defence experience, with astounding depth of play for a mobile game, all wrapped within a lush and wacky game world.” Watching the game’s trailer you can’t help but notice the obvious resemblance to Plants vs. Zombies, which the developers describe as a tribute. They’ve said that they have sought to re-innovate on the formula and gone about adding a range of new features which include; movable and active units, a dynamic tiles system, social features and boss fights.

    I’m willing to give the team a pass on this, I loved the original Plants vs Zombies and I’ve been waiting for a new game to come along in that template. Please don’t mention Plants vs Zombies 2, in-app purchasing titles makes me sad and I hate the feeling I’m being manipulated into spending money. I have my fingers very firmly crossed that this title will be a simple paid title rather than the insidious free to play – pay to enjoy path many new mobile games have been taking.

    You just wanted to know the most important piece of information didn’t you, the release date. Well it’s coming out for iOS on the 26th February and will be available in English, French, Spanish and German, with Android and browser versions due for release in spring and summer. With the team having a lot of previous combined experience, they list Age of Conan, Anarchy Online, Dreamfall – The Longest Journey and Battlestar Galactica Online as just some of the games they have either directed or been leads on, we have high hopes. Now we just have a month to wait to find out how good it really is.