Cut the Rope developer’s next game is Pudding Monsters

When I first heard the term “pudding monsters,” I thought about those Bill Cosby Jell-O Pudding Pops commercials where he made the scary faces that ran on television when I was a kid. That’s my pudding monster.

Thankfully, Cut the Rope developer ZeptoLab has something much cuter in mind. Pudding Monsters is the studio’s new game for iOS and Android. The title shares many of the sensibilities of the Cut the Rope games, but in doing something that doesn’t rely on its established brand and popular OmNom character, ZeptoLab is dealing with monster expectations.

“Since the release of Cut the Rope, we’ve been really busy working on all the opportunities that Cut the Rope provided us as a a team,” said ZeptoLab co-founder Semyon Voinov. “Like expanding the brand, adding new stuff, and releasing spin-offs like Cut the Rope: Experiments and a visual comic book. We’ve started our merchandising strategy and direction, but at the same time, we’ve always been eager to do different things.”

Pudding Monsters is different. It features new characters that are, well, monsters made out of pudding. They live in and around refrigerators and have a desire to expand. That’s where the developer introduces its fresh gameplay concepts.

“The goal of each level is to stick all of the monsters together,” said Voinov. “There are different kinds of monsters with different kinds of abilities. Which can help — or maybe even make it trickier — to accomplish the goal in each level.”

ZeptoLab is still in the teasing phase, so Voinov didn’t get more specific than that. He did say that one of the developers at the company came up with the concept for the title during an internal competition. Everyone at the studio spent a few days creating a new game, and the kernel of Pudding Monsters was the team’s favorite.

Now, the team has to deal with expectations.

“Overall, the Cut the Rope games were downloaded more than 250 million times,” said Voinov. “Of course, that’s a hard goal to meet, but the market has grown drastically since Cut the Rope was first released. The biggest challenge for us will be to maintain the interest to keep the [players] interested in our new game.”

Despite the concerns of living up to Cut the Rope’s legacy, Voinov and ZeptoLab are creating something new, and that is exciting for them.

“We’re creative people, and we’re happiest when we’re creating,” he said.