It wouldn’t be a far-reaching statement to say that Taneli Armanto kicked off this crazy mobile gaming industry that Gartner expects to hit $17.1 billion in 2014. As a Design Engineer at Nokia back in 1997 Armanto created the legendary game, Snake, which got people killing time with their phones for the first time to move an ever hungry, ever growing snake in monochrome glory. Since then, Snake was featured in over 400 million Nokia phones and is one of the most popular games in history.
After a career at Nokia Armanto is back, throwing his weight in a collaboration with independent mobile game development studio Rumilus Design to create Snake Rewind, a modern update of the classic game.
“The basic idea of the game is to be simple and easy to play, just like the original snake game, but adding more features,” says Kari Jakobsson, CEO of Rumilus Design and colleague of Armanto back at Nokia. “The name comes from the rewind feature, so you can rewind back and continue when you get in a tough spot.”
Rumilus Design was founded two years ago and had a minor hit on Windows Phone with Collapsticks, which has gotten 2.5 million downloads so far. With Snake Rewind they plan to launch on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. Jakobsson tells us the game will be free to play and very playable without any in-app purchases, but in-app purchases will be available.
Snake Rewind clearly has big shoes to fill, but it’s good to hear Snake is continuing its legacy.
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