A serious thought to casual gaming

A Sony playstation is too mighty a maneuver for the toe-twiddler looking to while away his three minute coffee break. Waiting to squeeze into this narrow time-gap is a million dollar mobile gaming industry largely dominated by American and Finnish developers. In a bid to explore this fertile territory, Atif Khan and Noman Shamsi, two young Hyderabadis, launched their brainchild “Wheely Bird”, a mobile gaming app albeit with measured expectations. Four thousand downloads later, the excited duo is now gearing up to take on the service based social platform.

It took Khan and Shamsi ten months and several technical hurdles to bring it to finality. “We had to ensure the smooth flow of the game, design the platforms and titrate the timing. The character development was integral to the game.” says Khan. The game drawn out of their childhood experiences largely depends on the player’s dexterity and desire to kill a few minutes. It requires a cursed bird hoisted on a wheel to be taken past platforms of hurdles to safety.

“We faced our share of hurdles during childhood. They came in handy when we were looking for inspiration. We wanted the character to stand for a positive, never-give-up attitude”. “I would sit at the back of my class and sketch. I was a casual artist and would go where my imagination led me”, says Atif, who claims to have personally sketched the character before giving it to his developers. “We imagined everything. But we had to hire app developers to bring it to life”.

“We now have in-app purchases to lure free players into buying the tougher levels of the game”, says Atif Khan. “Greater the number of downloads, greater the number of purchases”, he states. The former Oracle and Xerox employees partly pooled in their savings to kick-start the venture. “It does not require that you rip off your arm to invest in developments like these. A little investment could go a long way if this works”, says Khan.

Though the present technical education curriculum aims not so much at avid game developers, Khan says anyone interested can always enroll into a developer’s course. Indian game makers are yet to make their mark on the international arena of mobile gaming but the duo has set its aims high. “There are no Indians whose gaming apps have become chartbusters. We hope to be the first ones to break into the top ten.” The game is available on Andriod and iphones and can be downloaded for free.

By:Mythili Sankara