Apple rejects PopCap's Unpleasant Horse

New PopCap off-shoot 4th And Battery made it abundantly clear from the get-go that Unpleasant Horse – its very first release, due on the App Store later this month – wasn't going to sit at the My Little Pony end of the equine-based entertainment spectrum.

However, it would appear that the titular nag is even more unsavoury than its name would have you all believe. So much so that Apple has rejected the game because of its "mature content".

A post on the studio's Twitter feed earlier today, spotted by Joystiq, read "WTF? Apple rejected Unpleasant Horse cuz of 'mature content'? We thought horses dying in meat grinders was wholesome family entertainment!"

That post has since been removed but a follow-up is still there, explaining that the game will be resubmitted.

"We're appealing, though (with a higher rating) and we'll hopefully have good news for y'all soon!"

A further post added, "Anyhoo, we still love Apple. Honest. We even had (and liked!) a Newton back in the day. Hope we get an appropriate rating for the game!"

As announced earlier this week, Unpleasant Horse is a colourful platformer that sees you "bouncing from cloud to cloud and on to the backs of other, cuter flying ponies, who will thus be sent plummeting to a gruesome, bone-chewing demise, thanks to an unfortunately placed series of meat grinders on the ground below."

Bejeweled developer PopCap Games set up 4th And Battery "to bring some of our more experimental ideas to customers. It's a way to lift some of our internal filters and let us stretch our creative legs a little."