At first glance, the App Store game Bullistic bears a striking resemblance to the popular physics based game, Angry Birds.
Bullistic was developed by Melbourne digital media company, Millipede. They create a whole range of stuff for many kinds of clients, from concept art, illustration, and design work, to Flash games and apps for educational / E-learning or marketing purposes. They also do front end and backend work for websites.
And as you find with the disciplines and talent in digital media companies, their skills cross over pretty well for App Store development. Remarkably, the idea for Bullistic came about when Millipede was constantly asked by clients if they could do them an Angry Birds clone...
Bullistic is a free game we released as:
a) a free gift to clients and friends as a joke. We are ‘web for hire’ game dev company and are continually asked ‘can you build us something like Angry Birds?’, so we thought we’d give it a go.
b) an ode to the most successful and fun game on the App Store – Angry Birds
Since its release on the App Store on the 13th of January, Bulltastic has been downloaded well over 140,000 times. The popularity of the app has surprised the studio, and it's likely to receive a whole lot more attention after being featured as "New & Noteworthy" on many App Store locations around the world, as well as making prominent news on sites like Kotaku.
What is also suprising to Millipede is the negative feedback they've been receiving for their "Angry Birds clone". Angry Birds, however, was certainly not an original title and was preceded by games like Crush the Castle...
...we are getting canned on the App Store! People are ripping us to shreds for copying Angry Birds. But what more can we do? We put it in the app description. We are giving the game away for free. We admit this is an ode to Angry Birds. We love Angry Birds... ah well.
The huge response to Bullistic has prompted Millipede to develop it further with promises of a huge update later this month. While it already features Game Center leaderboards and achievements, the developer plans to ditch the ad support down the road and replace it with purchasable in-store items. Also coming are optimisations, more refined artwork, and extra levels.
For a full rundown on the development roadmap for Bullistic, check out Millipede's special page on Bullistic here.
If you're interested in checking out the app, it won't cost you a cent. It's free and downloadable from the App Store here.