On a lighter note this Monday afternoon, apparently word is out that Nokia has picked it’s grand prize winner in the game section to their “Calling All Innovators” development competition for the Nokia platform. The grand prize winner receives $250,000 so you would think the winner would have an incredibly unique innovative game right?
Well you’d be wrong. In fact the specific game that won has been cloned so many times over that it rivals other titles like Bejeweled and Tetris for clones. Most of the clones actually having been out before this particular game developed by 10tons. So what is this game called? It’s called Sparkle and if you’ve ever played, Zuma, Bonsai Blast or any other looping match-3 puzzle games, then you already know what Sparkle is.
If you don’t know what a looping match-3 puzzle game happens to be, let us explain. Essentially some colored objects, usually shiny balls, follow a path and you have your little ball shooter which you use to shoot other colored balls at the moving path of said original balls. Matching three or more of the same color eliminates them from the path with the goal being to eliminate all the moving balls before they reach you. There are usually power-ups of some kind as well to help you out.
We don’t mind cloned games and, in fact, sometimes the clones are better than the originals and even bring new features along with them. Sort of the natural evolution of gaming as it is anyways. However, to award $250,000 to a clone that isn’t innovative is actually rather funny. Perhaps this could even be labeled as a WTF article instead. The best part is yet to come though…
Not only did they award 10tons $250,000 for Sparkle, it isn’t even exclusive to the Nokia platform. In fact every other platform, mobile and desktop, including Windows, OSX, iOS, Bada, WebOS, has a version of Sparkle already, including Android. Nokia is the last platform to get it and all 10tons did was port it over to that platform and ended up walking away with $250,00 for a quick port.
It would have been nice to see an actual unique game win but kudos to 10tons we guess. Sparkle is a good game but definitely not innovative.
Website Referenced: DIYGamer
