Addressing the Inflammatory Elephant Content in Today’s "The Elephant Collection" Release

Armor Games :

Davis, California (November 6, 2023) - The team at Wonderful Elephant would like to extend our heartfelt apologies for the public distress caused by today’s release of The Elephant Collection, a compilation of ten highly popular games by creator John Cooney. While designed with the utmost respect for these majestic creatures through achievement hunting, metagaming, and a soundtrack of happy-hardcore music and polka, we acknowledge some elements may not live up to the actual lives and accomplishments of our most loved animal kingdom friends.
 
“Why do the elephants poop pastries?” John’s six-year-old daughter challenges. While she digresses, “It's kinda funny,” she goes on to explain that elephants in real life do not defecate any sort of confection or baked goods. Likewise, players globally have been quick to point out that elephants also do not live in hamster cages, drink coffee, participate in raves, or shoot lasers from backpacks.
 
The decalogy of games in The Elephant Collection have been remastered and preserved for the millions of players who played the original games, and now distributed on Steam, Itch.io, Humble, and GOG for the first time. With hits like Achievement Unlocked, This is the Only Level, and Elephant Quest playable in fullscreen outside of Flash/browser for the first time, it drums up concerns that these untrue depictions of elephants are continuing to get perpetrated to new audiences.
 
“At Wonderful Elephant we are committed to rectifying these concerns,” Cooney somberly shares. “While I agree with my daughter that elephants pooping pastries is hilarious, we do need to acknowledge our embellishments and do away with overcomplicated sphere grid RPG elephant leveling systems. We apologize to anyone who has been affected by any of the games in The Elephant Collection."
 
The Elephant Collection releases today on Steam, Itch.io, Humble, and GOG for $14.99 USD, and is available on both PC and Mac platforms.

Useful links:
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2274110/The_Elephant_Collection/
Launch trailer: https://youtu.be/0OUZ3kfs_7s
Press Kit: https://armorgamesstudios.com/games/elephant-collection
Developer Website: https://www.wonderfulelephant.com/
Publisher Website: https://armorgamesstudios.com/
Armor Games Studios on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArmorGameStudio
Developer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jmtb02
Press / content creator contact: [email protected]

 
About Wonderful Elephant (jmtb02):
John Cooney is the creator of Wonderful Elephant, and this label exists as a vessel for his vision in games. He has self-created and published over one hundred web games across a billion+ gameplays, including influential hits like This is the Only Level, Achievement Unlocked, and many, many more. Still deeply active in the Indie games scene, he was Head of Game Development at Armor Games and Senior Manager of Business Development at Kongregate.  He's been in the games industry since 2004.

 
About Armor Games Studios:
From its roots as a popular portal for online gaming, Armor Games Studios is a publisher that aims to work directly with and help foster talented indie developers to create unique and engaging games of all types for all platforms. For more information, visit www.armorgamesstudios.com, and follow the company on Twitter @ArmorGameStudio.