Cut the Rope is Apple’s Free App of the Week

Cut the Rope (iPhone screenshot 002)Cut the Rope (iPhone screenshot 001)

If you’re a sucker for physics-based puzzlers as I’ve always been but really can’t stand Angry Birds anymore, Cut the Rope is a much-needed refreshment from Rovio’s bird-slinging franchise. On the surface, the concept seems dull: you’re tasked with feeding candy to a little green monster named Om Nom while collecting stars.

But it’s how developers executed the super-realistic physics gameplay and paired it with colorful cartoonish visuals that blows mind.

Tens of millions of players can’t be wrong and I’m also guilty of falling in love and getting addicted to Cut the Rope. Already downloaded more than 300 million times around the world, the game’s never been free on the App Store so it’s kinda big deal  that Apple’s just made Cut the Rope its Free App of the Week…

Go ahead, download Cut the Rope and Cut the Rope HD.

This is a week-long promotion.

Here’s a cutesy launch trailer.

And a gameplay video.

Developed by ZeptoLab and published by red hot UK-based publisher Chillingo (now part of Electronic Arts), Cut the Rope made its App Store debut in October 2010. Nine days later, it’d been purchased a million times and rose to the top of App Store charts.

By the summer of 2012, the game zoomed past hundred million downloads and paved the way for two sequels – Cut the Rope: Experiments in 2011 and Cut the Rope: Time Travel in 2013 – in addition to a free standalone Christmas-themed version with 25 levels, Cut the Rope: Holiday Gift, released in December 2010.

Cut the Rope (iPad screenshot 001)Cut the Rope (iPad screenshot 002)

The Android version appeared on Google’s Play store in June 2011, followed by the DSiWare edition in September 2011 for Europe and November 2011 for North America on Nintendo DSi, and August 2013 for Nintendo 3DS gamers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgLiZ8RLwIs

Other versions include a limited HTML5 web app and the BlackBerry 10 build.

It’s obvious Cut the Rope has become quite a phenomenon, though not in a negative sense like Angry Birds. FreeMake.com has a nice interview up with ZeptoLab co-founder Efim Voinov, who says Cut the Rope will be coming to more devices.

They’ve recently partnered with Leap Motion to bring the game to TVs and PCs via the gesture-based Leap Motion controller and back in 2011 successfully brought Cut the Rope to the LG Smart TVs.