PopCap's
recently-established experimental games label 4th & Battery is off to a somewhat rocky start, as the company's first game,
Unpleasant Horse, was rejected by Apple for App Store publication due to "mature content."
4th & Battery announced the rejection in a series of Twitter updates on Thursday. Though the posts have since been removed and replaced with a message assuring the company's commitment to Apple, the original tweets were
archived by Joystiq.
"We thought horses dying in meat grinders was wholesome family entertainment!" the announcement reads.
4th & Battery has since resubmitted its free debut app to Apple with all content intact, but with a higher age classification rating.
Unpleasant Horse is a far cry from PopCap standards such as
Bejeweled and
Zuma. In the game, players take control of a "strikingly unpleasant" winged horse that destroys small birds and lands on "more pleasant horses" from above, knocking the nice ponies "earthward into a perpetual meat grinder for extra points."
The new 4th & Battery label plans to release several smaller-scale, arcade-style titles per year for platforms including PC, Facebook and iPhone. Some of the games from 4th & Battery, including Unpleasant Horse, will be aimed at mature audiences, PopCap said.
