Cut the Rope

• Developer — ZeptoLab • Publisher — Chillingo • Series — Cut the Rope • Genre — Puzzle • Modes — Single-player • Platforms — iOS Android Windows Phone Series 60 Blackberry 10 Browser Nintendo 3DS Nintendo DSi

• Illustration — A level of Cut the Rope. The candy floats in a bubble, which can be popped with a touch or blown to the right with the blue air cushion. The red button reverses the direction of gravity, making the candy go down in the bubble and up when it is not. On each stage, a candy is hung by one or several ropes, which the player can cut. The goal of each stage is to get the candy to a green monster named Om Nom by cutting the ropes in a particular order while utilizing the game's physics to get the candy to Om Nom. As the game progresses, new elements are added to the puzzles; examples including bubbles that can float the candy offscreen and spiders that can steal the candy. Such elements require the player to utilize them in such a fashion that the candy can reach Om Nom. There are several levels in the game, each divided into 25 stages. Each stage has three stars that can be collected by having the candy touch them. Though the stages can be completed without collecting all three stars, the stars are necessary for unlocking later levels.

Creative director Semyon Voinov and director of development Denis Morozov of ZeptoLab are the creators of Cut the Rope. The inspiration for Cut the Rope was during the development of their debut game, Parachute Ninja. Parachute Ninja was originally going to use a rope mechanic that the ninja would use to swing. ZeptoLab became unsatisfied with the controls of the rope and swapped it with a parachute mechanic. ZeptoLab eventually fine-tuned the rope physics to use in their next project, which would become Cut the Rope. The game started as a basic concept of delivering an object from point A to point B. When they had the idea of delivering candy to a little green monster, they found the idea both absurd and adorable, and they developed the game with this idea in mind. Much of Om Nom's features were designed after a two-year-old baby to make him cute, and ZeptoLab worked on his animations and sounds to give him charm.

ZeptoLab chose Chillingo as the publisher, different from the publisher of Parachute Ninja, Freeverse. ZeptoLab chose Chillingo over Freeverse because they felt Chillingo's player base would be a "good fit" for Cut the Rope target audience. Cut the Rope premiered on October 4, 2010, for iOS. This was followed by a free version with fewer levels for each device, called Cut the Rope Free and Cut the Rope HD Free respectively. The Android version was released in June 2011. The DSiWare version was released September 22, 2011, for Europe and November for North America on Nintendo DS (DSi), and August 22, 2013, for Nintendo 3DS users. In January 2012, a limited version of the game was published as a browser game for HTML5 browsers. The Series 60 version of the game was released in March 2012 in Nokia's Ovi Store, initially only being available on ^3 and Anna, but it was then later available on Belle. The BlackBerry version of Cut the Rope was released to BlackBerry World following the announcement of BlackBerry 10 in January 2013.