While the London Games Festival happened over the past week with the Bafta Awards for videogames being announced, Chennai had its own low-key gaming event happen this past weekend. At the Chennai Trade Centre, I happened to visit the India Gaming Show, which was hosted between April 17-19. This wasn’t just your average “Comic Con, but make it videogames” type event. It was a little more serious, a little quieter, and not really catered specifically to the general gaming fanbase. It was an industry event, and I’d say that at the end of it, I came out feeling like I understood a bit more about the state of the videogames industry in India. And I must admit, I’m feeling pretty good about it all.
A quick walk around the stalls will tell you this — Esports is huge, and rapidly being centred across mobile games like BGMI and Free Fire. JetSynthesys, one of the sponsor partners of the event was hosting a “Real Cricket” tournament, with the game being casted on a big screen. Full with live commentary, esports jerseys and all. JetSynthesys has also quietly been acquiring games that do well globally, and I tried out EverMerge. It has existed for a while, but their goal is to add time-based events that are also India centric. Now don’t roll your eyes, but I’ve always said this, and I do believe there’s something comforting about the brain numbing grind of a candy crush-type game. ‘Let’s game Now’, another Esports-first organisation has also developed its own mobile games. I tested out ‘Bharat Run’, which is a regional subway surfer/temple run hybrid. They intend to release a level-based career mode that unlocks Indian monuments.
It’s clear that mobile games still hold big cache in the Indian market. As a serious-minded gamer, I don’t particularly like the idea of it, but I do understand why. It’s simply easier to get into and a lot more accessible than PCs and consoles here. However, I don’t also want to dismiss the idea that great single-player games can also come out of mobile, and I do see the way being paved for those games.
Krafton, who gamers know best as the team behind BGMI, also had large stalls put up with several games on display. Apart from being event sponsors, I also learnt that Krafton has incubated quite a few games in India. I tried ‘Frontier Paladin’, which to explain extremely simply — feels like a single-player hybrid of League of Legends and Diablo. It’s created by a Mumbai-based studio, and the game releases next week for the PC.
This wasn’t, of course, the only of the games that developers had to show case in the Gaming Show. I also played Xogar games’ Roadster Odyssey, a post apocalyptic vehicle-based shooter. I get a lot of Mad Max vibes from this game, and I particularly loved the options of a heavily modded auto rickshaw, and beefed up Maruti 800, and an ambassador with a rocket launcher where the luggage rack would be. It’s an online + PvE Shooter by Bengaluru-based developers, and it plays pretty well already. I’m looking forward to when it releases.
It was quite interesting also to see stalls with games in different stages of their development. Eucleia Entertainment boldly showcased ‘Solar Knight’, which has been in the works only for the past few months. They were at the centre to showcase the combat system and collect feedback from players. Giri, the co-founder of the project, says, “Indian gamers have wanted Indian centric elements incorporated in games for some time. While that’s important, we’re first looking at making our gameplay great — inspired by games like Black Myth: Wukong, and quick time events like in Clair Obscur Expedition 33.” At their early stages, they are still working towards getting there, and speak enthusiastically about building a game that’s really worth spending hours on.
Honestly, I’ve been cocooned for so long, interacting with games only on my computer and console — it felt pretty good to encounter real gamers out here in the wild, who are passionate about building good games. India GDC is happening in November, also in the same Chennai Trade Centre, and the Gaming Show felt like a pretty neat warm up to the bigger event later this year which hopes to bring in hundreds of developers.