Tag: casual

Peru :: Squares Trials

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“Reverse engineering is key”

My recent journey to Peru inspired me to find my game for this wonderful country full of llamas and crazy altitudes. After some research on games developed in Peru I was immediately fascinated by its game development history and how everything started, so this time I want to take the chance to share with you this story: Peru’s game development history started off very early – with an interesting game “analyzing” and reverse engineering (nice way to put hacking and cracking) scene before internet and games were widespread and the people of Peru had to find alternative ways to spread and play video games.

This polygon article and this gamelab article tell the fantastic story of Mr. Byte and his hacker’s club TEG (Twin Eagles Group). While decompiling, and cracking first games, they’ve also gained the required expertise in game programming. They’ve started by adding new scenes, new levels, new languages to the games; so it was only a short way until they started developing the first games on their own: Gunbee F-99 (Amiga: 1989), and games inspired by local politics such as La Tercera Vuelta and The King of Peru (fighting game), but also the first Peruvian erotic game: Samba de Oruga (tetris with “happy end”).

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By 2007 TEG stopped their development efforts and the Peruvian game development industry was almost dead. However, apparently starting with the Lima Game Jam in 2012 the spirit to develop games was rediscovered. In the middle of the mobile game area, a new chance for publishing games  was visible to Peruvian developers.

Since 2012, Peru is also home of a vivid and uprising IGDA chapter. The’ve just published a brilliant guide of all games developed in Peru. I was extremely surprised by the variety of games developed in this country. In particular the new rise since 2012 is very visible in this guide. Uprising studios such as Bamtang Games and LEAP Game Studios seem to be strong forces in this country. So the IGDA chapter was also the first address I used to raise my question “If I should play ONE game developed in Peru – which one should it be?“. After a couple of days I got my answer: “We talk a lot about your question and we believe that you must play Squares Trials“.

Squares Trials is a very polished fast-paced pastime mobile game about – squares. It uses a simple but addictive and challenging principles: tap blue squares; double tap dark blue squares; never, ever tap on red ones; move arrows to the right direction – and that’s it. That’s also already the very simple and comprehensive tutorial of the game. Sounds easy – it is also easy – the first 3 levels. The games becomes extremely addictive but also very stressful and sometime definitely frustrating. The music also adds to this constant panic – and especially this evil grey shadow disappearing from right to left to put even more pressure on me failing again.

Definitely a perfect game to forget some stressful bus journeys in Peru  🙂 In summary I am very fascinated by Peru’s development spirit and how they made their way into games (literally). Well played Peru – well played!

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(me playing at Machu Picchu)

 

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Release 2014
Genre Casual Mobile Game
Developer LEAP Game Studios
Publisher LEAP Game Studios
https://itunes.apple.com/pe/app/squares-trials/id703217085

Pakistan :: Run Sheeda Run

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Poultry in Motion…

After some research, the first Pakistani game, which caught my attention, was the mobile first-person-shooter “Pakistan Army Retribution”. In this game you would play a Pakistani soldier defeating Taliban terrorists in a school. The game should remind and make aware of the 2014 Peshawar school massacre (141 people, including 132, children were killed) and was developed following up the one-year anniversary. However, designing a game based on such a tragedy is a very sensitive topic and probably not the perfect way to deal with such a doom event. Due to lots of criticism on its poor taste and disrespectfulness for families and victims it was removed from Google Play Store in January (Article).

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The local game developer community is still extremely upset about this game and strongly criticise it as they find it is a very bad representation for true Pakistani games.

“This game has been designed by some non-professionals and is based on Terrorist attack on Peshawar’s Army Public School on 16 December 2014, which is a very sensitive issue for Pakistani audience. Thus the game has faced a lot of criticism from locals and eventually taken down. The game has poor graphics, game design and technical errors.”

So instead of playing this dark game I got to play an extremely colourful and humorous mobile game. Sadia Bashir, a representative of the Pakistan Game Developers association and the local developer community helped me to find another and more representative game for the growing developer community. They chose “Run Sheeda Run” for me, a colourful mobile jump’n’run game, which reminds of Pakistan’s tradition and street culture. The game takes place in Lahore, Pakistan. The game starts by introducing the player in form of a comic to the two friends: the Pakistani kid Sheeda and his beloved smart chicken. But suddenly, the chicken gets kidnapped by this stereotypical evil super-villain, the BBQ chef. (a “qasai”, a member of the community with the occupation of butchering). The game starts and the player has to help Sheeda to save his best friend from becoming part of Chicken Tikka on a BBQ fest. The game is designed as an endless runner; the main gameplay reminds of the Danish game Subway Surfers. You are running through the streets of Lahore, trying to avoid obstacles. It takes place in a city theme (with a mix of fancy 3d objects and pretty flat dwellers), with street markets, food carts, grumpy businessmen, and busy streets as obstacles. You can run, duck, jump, and slide.. until you die (so actually the cook finally steals your chicken). My favourite mechanics, however, is definitely the one, where you are able to use your chicken as a flying apparatus. The game is extremely polished with fancy graphics and very nice animations. However, it is kind of sad to know, that in the end your friend always will be cooked.

The game is based on this nice webcomic “Run Sheeda Run”. I am definitely waiting for an English translation to read the comics. While the website promotes the game with “Made in Pakistan, Made by Pakistan, Made for Pakistan!” I would highly recommend changing this to “Made in Pakistan, Made by Pakistan, Made for the World!”.  

Release 2014
Genre Jump’n’run, Mobile, Endless runner
Developer we.R.play Studios
Publisher we.R.play Studios
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.werplay.runsheedarun