Freeze Tag, Flurry, & Activision Mobile Join in on Grimm Reaper: Hidden Tales

The mobile gaming market just got a little broader today as Freeze Tag, developer of games for tablets and smartphones alike with a focus on family fun in mind, announced a publishing deal with Activision Mobile Publishing around their "Grimm Reaper: Hidden Tales" title. The deal is expected to get the game out into broader markets by the end of 2012.

Freeze Tag's "Grimm Reaper: Hidden Tales" focuses on the Grimm's Fairytales universe, bringing in a wide variety of familiar names and stories and putting them in a "hidden objects" kind of setting in which players will have to rescue familiar names from the Reaper, a character seemingly out to destroy the Grimm world. Once players rescue said famous characters, they can then build a "safe haven", using a menu of buildings and decorations for same, as well as creatures to help populate the safe haven, and interact with that. This makes it something of a dual-sided game, one part for finding the hidden objects and saving the characters, and the second part in building the safe haven to populate with successfully rescued intellectual property.

While Activision Mobile Publishing could offer Freeze Tag a very wide market indeed for their releases, Flurry provided something else just as worthwhile, according to Freeze Tag CEO Craig Holland. Holland elaborated, "What's more, Flurry provided us with deep insight into monetization practices, and did so with a total respect for the creative value we wanted to bring to our users. We're very excited about the game's potential."

Reports indicate that "Grimm Reaper: Hidden Tales" is going to carry on with Freeze Tag's "family friendly" approach, meaning that this one is likely to have a very specific niche and leave a lot of gamers out in the cold. Still, for those looking for games to enjoy with their children, the Freeze Tag line is likely to have plenty of solid titles in their quiver.

A release date on "Grimm Reaper: Hidden Tales" is unknown, but it's expected to release in the fourth quarter of this year, meaning there's not too much longer left to wait. It's interesting to note that the Grimm's fairytale universe was actually much darker in the past, so chances are that Freeze Tag will be taking some liberties with the original source material to keep that "family friendly" credo going.

Whether this niche strategy will pay off for Freeze Tag and its cohorts in the long run remains to be seen, but it's certainly a safe bet that they'll at least get their niche in play. Freeze Tag's earlier releases look solid enough, so it would seem that the quality on "Grimm Reaper: Hidden Tales" should be at least commensurate with expectations, though selling to a smaller market is a strategy that has risks of its own.