Viral Hit "Angry Anna" Tackles the Subject of Political Corruption Within India in Homage to "Angry Birds"

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- "Angry Anna" an embeddable HTML5 game that tackles the subject of government corruption in India has become a viral hit. Since launching one week ago, the game has been played more than 225,000 times.  On the day of release, the game became the fifth largest trending topic on Twitter India, and was shared more than 14,000 times on Facebook. Unlike most games considered viral, Angry Anna was shared in playable form through HTML5 technology available only through GameSalad, Inc. which empowers aspiring and established game designers to easily develop sophisticated web and mobile games.

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Created and published with GameSalad by India-based developer Geek Mentors Studio, the game draws on mobile game mega-hit Angry Birds for inspiration. In this politically-charged game-as-social-commentary, the birds of the original game have been replaced by anti-corruption activists Anna Hazare, Baba Ramdev and Kiran Bedi, while the pigs have been replaced with likenesses of politicians including P. Chidambaram, Pranab Mukherjee, Suresh Kalmadi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Angry Anna was developed quickly to harness support for recent political activism in India. GameSalad's flagship product, GameSalad Creator, empowers anyone, regardless of technical skill, to design, publish and distribute sophisticated original games, using a visual, drag-and-drop interface that requires no coding. Once the game has been designed, developers can choose to publish to a variety of platforms, including iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), Mac desktops, or to the Web, which utilizes brand cutting-edge HTML5 technology.

With GameSalad, games such as Angry Anna are published to the web and authored in HTML5, enabling them to reach an audience of more than 1 Billion people using web browsers, without requiring players to download additional software and plug-ins.  These HTML5 games are inherently sharable:  each game is granted a unique embed code, allowing it the ability to be embedded and played on other websites, posted to Twitter and Facebook, or included in an email, just like a YouTube video. This easy embed process allowed Geek Mentors to post Angry Anna to the www.angryanna.com website, in addition to being playable on GameSalad Arcade.

To embed or share Angry Anna, simply use the following code:

<iframe src="http://e.gamesalad.com/play/27959" width="480" height="353"  allowtransparency="true" scrolling="no"></iframe>

"Angry Anna has become a political phenomenon drawing attention to the issue of political corruption in India," Mohammad Shah Nawaz, Co-founder of Geek Mentors Studios.

"Using GameSalad Creator allowed Geek Mentor Studio to quickly respond to the political climate in India, capture our message in the compelling format of a game, and easily distribute the game over the web. The entire creation and publishing process took only three days."

"The phenomenal viral success of Angry Anna demonstrates the power of games as a medium for communication and artistic expression," said Steve Felter GameSalad CEO. "We've seen games go viral, but what is new is that now games can be easily shared in a playable state, similar to how we experience viral videos."

About GameSalad

GameSalad is a community that empowers everyone to express and share their ideas through games. GameSalad provides a platform that allows creators to rapidly design, publish and distribute original games for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Web. Founded in 2007, GameSalad is a privately held, venture-backed company headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with studios in Austin, Texas and Los Angeles, California.

About Geek Mentors Studio

Based in New Delhi, India Geek Mentors Studio is an independent application developer, game designer, trainer and game publisher with expertise across major mobile platforms including iOS and Android. Available for work-for-hire, Geek Mentors Studio maintains the culture of a small boutique while demonstrating the reach and capabilities of a large organization.

SOURCE GameSalad