“Our motto is games for everyone, and we want at least one member of every family to have a Creative Monkey Games product on their phone,” shares Deepak Aravind, CEO-Founder and Creative Director of CMG. The 34-year-old launched the games development company in 2015, which now has a suite of different games, largely cricket based (for now), that have become highly popular in Delhi-NCR and even in villages.
“Cricket is a universal language across the country, and indeed the greater South Asian region, whether it’s Nepal or Bangladesh. While our games like World Cricket Battle and World Cricket Battle 2 having become popular throughout the subcontinent, with millions of downloads and active users, we want to expand to other cricket-loving markets like Australia, the UK and beyond,” says Arvind, whose company has tied up with cricketing legend Matthew Hayden to create and launch his official cricket game ‘HAYDOS 380’, which will be exclusively launched in app stores later this month, and will be a mobile cricketing like no other, he promises.
“You can’t really get too creative with games like cricket that have a set standard of rules. But in working closely with Matthew, examining his movements and applying it to the gameplay, and adding other features that haven’t been seen before, we want to take this game across the world.”
The company applied the same strategy with its game Ludo Emperor that released earlier this month to high praise, if app store ratings and reviews are anything to go by. “AT CMG, we always try and give users something other games don’t offer. When Ludo became really popular last year during the first wave of lockdowns, all the other developers copy pasted the same board game format,” says Aravind.
The company, he explains, has taken its time developing a new take on the old game and is now capitalising on that demand with a 360 degree immersion to the world of Ludo Emperor. According to him, there is a full narrative and in-game story line, which people have really appreciated for its unique twist on Ludo. This is only the beginning with Aravind and his team developing a whole range of new games, from sports to first-person-shooters to meet that target of Creative Monkey Games on every phone.