You wouldn't know it from looking at the cartoonish, hand-painted aesthetic or the colorful animals that ride in the back of the titular vehicle, but recent App Store release Snuggle Truck was originally smacked down by Apple's review board. What could possibly earn this adorable game such scrutiny? Turns out that the first version of the game was called Smuggle Truck, and rather than escort cute creatures to the zoo, you aided illegal immigrants by driving them over hazards and across the border.
News of the game's colorful take on this hot button issue circulated earlier this year, with reactions ranging from disgust on Fox News Channel to jokes on the TBS late-night series, Lopez Tonight. Following the buzz generated by a spot in the Boston Indie Showcase at the PAX East video game convention in March, Smuggle Truck developer Owlchemy Labs submitted the game to the App Store for approval. But after a longer-than-promised certification process, the studio received the bad news.
"We were contacted by Apple and told that our game was not compliant for the App Store due to content reasons," explains Alex Schwartz, founder of Owlchemy Labs. While Schwartz is unable to detail which parts of the game drew Apple's ire due to a non-disclosure agreement, the decision left the studio with a completed game and no clear option for bringing it to the iOS platform.
While it's unclear whether the public controversy played a role in the app's rejection, Schwartz believes the game's tone – which is pure satire, as evidenced by the "Legal Immigration" mode where you sit in a waiting room for 19 years – was lost in translation by media pundits who hadn't played the game and still saw video games as child's play. "The issue here is that satire requires context, and a medium like games sometimes requires you to experience it for yourself," he claims. "Most of the criticisms we hear are actually the general idea that a game can't talk about a subject like immigration."
In actuality, the game was originally conceived during an indie developer gathering in Boston, where participants designed immigration-focused games to support a friend who was encountering roadblocks coming to the United States through legal channels. "We thought we'd try to maybe make some money for him by selling our games, or just raise some awareness of the issues of immigration," says Schwartz.
Though Schwartz notes that other iPhone apps have tackled the subject of immigration, he believes precedent alone is no guarantee of approval: "It's on a case-by-case basis [based on] whatever kind of environment the App Store's trying to create for itself." Getting to that point, however, requires a leap of faith, as developers are unable to obtain pre-approval for a concept and can only submit the finished product. "There is no way to run an idea past the review board," he adds. "It is definitely a gamble. It's a risk that we were willing to take by putting that game up on the App Store."
Since the launch of the App Store in July 2008, many high profile apps have been rejected for varying reasons, whether it's due to objectionable content or for including features and abilities prohibited by regulations. In response, some developers have turned to third-party marketplaces for jailbroken iOS devices, reworked their apps for other platforms, or simply bided their time until the particular restrictions were eased.
Rather than embrace those options, Owlchemy Labs decided to rely on the strength of the physics-based, side-scrolling driving gameplay and change the title to Snuggle Truck, swapping in cuddly animals for the cartoonish human passengers of the original build. "We knew we had something good on our hands and wanted to get it to people as fast as possible," explains Schwartz. "I think that other companies would have changed it in different ways, but we wanted to go with the wordplay and the pun and do something funny and notable."
Luckily, iOS gamers and reviewers alike have embraced the change with open arms: at press time, Snuggle Truck is the second-best-reviewed App Store game of 2011 (behind World of Goo) on reviews aggregate site Metacritic, with largely positive remarks from users as well. Owlchemy Labs plans to support the iOS versions with an update that adds a level creation and sharing feature. And since Apple's restrictions don't extend past the boundaries of the App Store, players interested in the original Smuggle Truck can download both versions of the game together for Mac and PC from smuggletruck.com.
Though unsure whether Owlchemy Labs will choose another serious topic for its next original game, Schwartz says the team's goal is never to pursue controversy purely for the sake of it. "I don't think we want to create a politically charged game or something that's necessarily going to cause some kind of malicious shock value for our next game. We don't want to be a game studio that attempts to get on Fox News with everything we do," he asserts. "We're really interested in fun gameplay, so whatever we can prototype that gets people smiling and laughing and having fun, that's what we'll make."
