Hyderabad: Every day, a thousand games are released in app stores, but all we fall for is a Flappy Bird, a Candy Crush, a Clash of Clans or a 2048. May be because they are mind-numbingly illogical or plain addictive.
But city boy Asar Dhandala wants to break the trend with Petite. Though the mobile game is two weeks away from release, it has already swept three awards in five months, the most recent being the Best Game Story Award at the Casual Connect Conference held in Singapore.
The 19-year-old student of Backstage Pass Institute of Gaming and Technology explains why the Story Award is significant, besides finding two publishers at the conference in three days: “Petite is a game and a story at the same time. In 42 levels, it unveils the life story of an old woman in flashback — her childhood, teenage and adulthood. My teammate Vishesh Chopra and I did not want to deliver a challenging game, but a soothing experience. So it feels nice that Petite has been awarded for its essence, its storyline.”
But why a game on women? Asar, who runs Seven Summits Studio start-up in the city, says, “As per a survey, only 34 per cent of people who read play mobile games. And, women make up for most of them. In Petite, at every level, memory snippet from a woman’s past is released. So there’s a lot of reading involved.”
