Angry Birds, Crush the Castle, and Inspiration

When I first saw Angry Birds, my first thought was that it copied (or more diplomatically, “was inspired by”) another game I had played called Crush the Castle. I looked up some details, and discovered that Angry Birds was released on December 10, 2009 while Crush the Castle was available in early 2009, at the exact time Angry Birds started their development. I will say this: Angry Birds added a lot more personality to the game. I thought it was interesting that Angry Birds kept the monarchy/military theme for the enemies, with pigs dressed in crowns and helmets. Angry Birds also uses a slingshot rather than a trebuchet.

A comparison:

And here Crush The Castle (jump ahead to 30 seconds):

Link: Crush the Castle

Also, as a side note, the game “Osmos” which is included in the Humble Indie Bundle is also reminiscent of a flash game I played years ago as well. I couldn’t find the old flash game, but it involved controlling a fish to eat smaller fish while avoiding larger ones. Each time you ate a smaller fish, you’d become slightly larger. It was the same basic gameplay as Osmos, though Osmos seems to have added a few more features.

16 thoughts on “Angry Birds, Crush the Castle, and Inspiration

  1. armorgames have some great games, I’m pretty sure I played conquer the castle on their website well before angry birds came out. Angry birds looks really like a total rip off the armour games game. Unless they were both based on some earlier game, or the developer moved companies or something. Its a shame armorgames didn’t make all the money that angry birds did. Their games are really good. Especially gemcraft chapter 0.

  2. I feel that Angry Birds only made more money because it was released on Iphone, when CTC wasn’t AT THAT TIME. IF CTC2 was released at that time, i think it would have made a lot more money than AG

  3. I arrived here due to thinking the same thing. To me Angry Birds is a blatant rip off of Crush the Castle.
    I haven’t played Osmos but from what I’ve seen of it I think the other game you’re talking about is Insaniquarium.

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  7. Probably no one will read this, but Fishy is just like Something Fishy, a shockwave game by Clevermedia that I remember playing back in the dang 90s.

  8. So what I’ve gathered from this is that originality doesn’t exist anymore…

    But yeah, I remember playing crush the castle (and that fishy game too :P) and all of it’s earlier iterations ages before angry birds. I refuse to download any of the angry birds apps because of what a blatant copy they are.

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  10. I remember a game called… Flood I think?

    it was like fishy but top down, and you’d absorb the organisms you “ate” and they’d add onto your tail, once you got big enough you’d go to the next “level” where you seemed to float higher.

    Some lady wrote it as her thesis i believe?

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