VIJAYAWADA: Guntur-based mobile and computer gaming company, Street Lamp Games, a brainchild of 27-year-old Gurijala Deepak, became the first Indian company to win the Indie Prize Casual Connect Europe Award (IPCCEA) 2019, one of the top five international gaming awards, in the best mobile game category.
The award for the 25th edition of video games professionals’ international conference was presented at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre, London on May 30, where Deepak and his team received the award along with the winning amount of USD 36,000, approximately Rs 25 lakh.
Speaking to TNIE, Deepak said, “Many Indian companies have been nominated in several categories in the past but this is the first time that one has actually won the competition. I feel very happy that coming from a small town, I could make my country proud.”
An eight-member team, comprising founder and concept director Deepak, designer Mahesh Athirala, developer Bharat Khalapara, artist Raj Vishnu and Shashank K, programmer Nikhil Gandhamuneni, Kalyan and Madhu, came up with the mobile video game called ‘Bombarika’.
Casual Connect Europe Award felicitates video games in eight categories — best audio, best game design, best game art, best kids and family game, best narrative game, best innovative game, audience choice award and best mobile game. ‘Bombarika’ was nominated in four of these categories — best game design, best game art, best innovative game and best mobile game.
Explaining the game Deepak said, “It is a puzzle game in which a bomb is randomly dropped in a house and the player has to detect the bomb and throw it out of the house by using household items with the aim of saving the house.”
Bombarika had also won in the Indian Game Developer Conference in 2018.
In IPCCEA, 90 participants were shortlisted out of the initial 4,000 participants from 140 countries. “It was a three-day conference and prizes were supposed to be announced on the last day. We came to know that we have been selected, in the month of April. But, till May 29, which was the last but second day of the conference, we did not know that we had won the prize. We were only asked to attend the prize distribution ceremony and so we thought that we might have been nominated, which is a normal thing. The announcement of the award came to us as our life’s biggest surprise,” expressed Deepak.
Born to G V Sheshagiri Rao and G Jayashree, Deepak started his company on June 6, 2016 with an investment of Rs 4 lakh. He has developed four games till date — Gravita Bridge, Cubots - The Origins (only for computer), Bombarika and Cursed Arena.
“I graduated as an automobile engineer and had cleared entrance exams for MBA admissions back in 2015, but I gave that up to start my own gaming company,” Deepak said.