• by Amy Corr , Staff Writer @MediaPostOTL, May 7, 2012

The object of most video games is to avoid being killed or eaten. In the newly released Sour Patch Kids game “World Gone Sour” for PlayStation and Xbox, the mission is quite the opposite: winners are the ones who are eaten.

Playing off the brand’s sour, then sweet, TV ads, Mother NY teamed up with gaming partners Capcom, PlayBrains and Beefy Media to create a branded video game that was close to two years in the making.

“All Sour Patch Kids need to reach the human belly in order to fulfill their destiny,” said David Hohusen, creative/animator at Mother. “Dropped and misplaced Kids slowly turn insane. You play as a lost Kid trying desperately to be eaten.”

“World Gone Sour” launched April 11, taking players through nine levels of varying locations, including a grimy movie theater floor, an abandoned shed and a gothic-themed girl’s bedroom.

Players must jump, solve puzzles and collect discarded Sour Patch Kids to defeat obstacles. The more discarded Sour Patch Kids one collects, the larger your game character becomes.

“‘World Gone Sour’ brings many abandoned, discarded objects to life as baddies that you’ll fight: Gum Crawlers, Duct-Tape Fliers, Matchstick Spiders, and 9v Battery Defenders, to name a few,” said Hohusen.

The game is less than a month old and already has been mastered by diehard players.

Hohusen points out that “World Gone Sour” is not the first branded video game out there. “Burger King has several games featuring the King, and Seven-Up made 'Cool Spot' for Sega/Super Nintendo way back in 1993. In many ways, 'World Gone Sour' pays homage to some of those old-school platformer games ('Mario Brothers' 'Earthworm Jim,' 'Oddworld,' etc).”