We Indians have evolved in Gaming since childhood from going into Internet Cafes to play games, to experiencing Arcade Games in Tier 1 & 2 Cities, and now through widely accessible mobile devices. Some lucky ones are able to afford Gaming Laptops and consoles such as Play Stations and Xbox. The market for gaming is growing each day, and due to it there is potential to grow in the gaming development industry too. We all hope and aspire for India to be the future of Gaming Industry and revolutionize the market like how Japan did it in the 80s, and continues to do so even today.
One such Indian Startup, Onami Games Pvt. Ltd. is trying to not take the quick bucks shortcut route, and wants to establish themselves focusing on real talents and real gamer experience, with a good quality game development process. They seem to be very passionate team and give us a promising hope of delivering a good quality games.
We sat down with the Founder – Dilip Das for an one on one interview, in helping us understand their startup better, and learn their goals and vision. Do go through their interview conducted by Desi Founder Team.
Also check them out on their socials:
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What inspired the creation of Onami Games Pvt. Ltd. and what is your ultimate vision for the company?
The aim was to create “actual” videos games, where there is actual innovation and uniqueness. The vision is to create unique games for all platforms, and through that get global reorganization too.
How do you see Onami Games contributing to the gaming industry in the next 5 years?
It’s hard to say what will happen after 5 years. I genuinely focus on the “now” than thinking about what will happen in future. It doesn’t mean that I am not thinking about the future. I do believe that if I can do my best right now, the future will automatically bring a better outcome. Hopefully not Just I/We as Onami Games, but the entire country will see global recognition of an Indian Game Development Organization.
Could you describe a typical day at Onami Games? What are the main activities your team engages in?
A typical day in Onami Games goes this way usually: We post on specific channels of Teams about the objectives of the day, so that all other Designers and Artists are aware of what is exactly happening, and others can provide their comments/reviews/feedback. Time wise it’s flexible and work from home. So the e-workplace is always active, and some people prefer to work in the mornings some at night time, which is perfectly fine as long as it is meeting the deadlines and benchmarks.
How do you manage the creative process and ensure smooth development cycles?
I believe in Visionary EYE and feedback to ensure creative process and development cycle. For creativity, each task goes through multiple checks and eyes, and then only when we get the green signal, we usually finalize the task.
For development process, we make roadmap for each month in advance, create task on project management portal, and distribute it among the members.
It’s not always smooth and is possible to reach deadlines due to several factors, specially when a small bug takes a lot of time to resolve, that it causes momentary blockage for the roadmap until it is sorted. Sometimes there are sudden changes in plan too, due to ensuring quality and exact outcome, which is when we can miss the deadline.
What have been some of the biggest challenges in developing Kart Avengers and BlueDot?
For Kart Avengers the biggest challenges are:
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Optimization: The worlds are quite big and the game objects are not extremely low-poly. We want to show quality, and for that we have used quite detailed assets, and as a consequence of it, the optimization is a real challenge. Other than optimization we didn’t face much major issues.
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Map Design: It requires really a lot of effort to design map including tracks, then check everything to be accurate and also keep the physics interaction against the kart more closer to reality.
How have you overcome these challenges, especially during the pandemic era?
Especially for the optimization, we did a lot of R&D, and then eventually created a lot of LOD (level of detail) variants. We removed unnecessary Post Processing Burden and Texture Atlas to use a single Material for Multiple objects, so that the GPU won’t draw a lot of materials at once, which helps in keeping the GPU less heavy.
How do you perceive the current gaming scene in India, especially in terms of indie developers like yourselves?
You will be wondering if I say that there are already a lot of games that are directly or indirectly being developed in India, and those games aren’t even heard of. Most of these games are not even meant for the Indian Market. Unfortunately, as these game development works are being outsourced to us, Indian gaming devs don’t get sufficient credit for it’s development.
People are just exposed to mobile games such as Pub-G, but mobile devices solely can’t make the gaming market mature. For that no matter what, we need a great influx of PC gamer population in India. Not even 1% People in India buys PC games genuinely. Right now it’s just a fraction of the market. However, the potential is indeed there as we grow, and get exposed to more quality games, and our purchasing power increases, in both mental and economical perspectives.
Are there any particular trends or changes you foresee in the Indian gaming market?
Not that much, but I am seeing a change people. They are not seeing games as something super Taboo or mind destroying things. Parents especially with the old mentality usually see gaming as a distraction from studies for their kids and something that should be avoided at all cost. It’s really hard to convince that crowd, but as newer generations are becoming parents, they are being more open to adapt into the gaming culture, and not seeing it as something toxic. In fact there’s an upward going curve when it comes to spending on in-app purchases. So there’s indeed a positivity trend and hope going forward.
How did your current team come together? What qualities do you look for when hiring new members?
I started with only 1 developer to work along with me. Later on when the project became more ambitious, I realized that to do something remarkable I need to come up with a remarkable team as well. I then started expanding the team with good quality members. My main criteria is/was to get a member who is more open to learn and adapt, and not just have ample experience only. Some people with good experience can be proven to be arrogant, as they don’t want to compromise, or are ready to hear constructive feedback.
What advice would you give to aspiring game developers looking to join the industry?
PASSION! PASSION! PASSION! Don’t join just because you love playing games, or if you feel like being a part of Game industry is a chill and fun profession experience.If you think so then you are quite wrong.
To survive and thrive in this industry, be ready for frequent Acidity cycles and having 12-16 hours of work in the early days, for your own research and study. You are usually creating less, and are mostly just fixing the problems. Creating a game is not that hard, making the game playable is.
To get into this industry, start learning on your own, explore, join groups on social media, take Udemy courses or Watch YouTube and keep solving problems. See if it still attracts you. If you find that it’s still attractive, then good job, this field is definitely made for you. We need more passionate gaming devs for our country.
What can players anticipate from BlueDot, and what sets it apart from other survival games?
“Choice Matters”
In BlueDot (Project name) AKA Breakthrough (Actual game name), you are in your home, in your room, about to go to sleep, after just having a 9-5 life. The Time era is futuristic. In this time frame we all get to select what to dream when sleeping, and there’s a device where you can configure what to dream. There are some topics/desire to dream which you can chose, and each topic/desire gives you buff if you select focus on doing that in the game. Once you lie down, you teleport to the dream (land) where the time is similar to ours, 21st century.
It’s a bit of post apocalypse. You wake up in a Lost island, you gather materials, craft essential stuffs, and explore, then you will find wilderness, and ghouls all over. There are some big settlements, surrounded by walls where human lives, and this is where the game starts.
To enter in a settlement, you have to prove yourself by taking contracts/quests and convince them that you are worthy to get inside. Once in, you can take a lot of decisions to influence the village and the villagers, from marrying to conquering and expanding.
You can even play like a maniac/psychopath, where you can mix poison in the water to kill others, sell information in black-market, cheat/scam others just for your personal gains, and so on.
The end goal of Breakthrough is to escape the cycle of life and dreams. This can only be done when all the desires are fulfilled, and both the sides of light and dark are played. To achieve that, you need to do multiple runs with multiple desires.
What lessons have you learned from your previous experiences, both as a hobbyist and working on well-known games like Fall Guys?
To make an actual game, you need proper planning, roadmap for each step.Discussion, and planning are the most important things, without that project will collapse.
How important is community feedback in shaping the development of your games?
The significance of community feedback is massive. We will listen to every single feedback and see if it fits.
That will be a wrap of the interview. Hope you enjoyed reading it, as much as we enjoyed creating it. If you too have an interesting Founder Story to share it with the world, please feel free to submit a request here.
How do you plan to market Kart Avengers and “BlueDot” to ensure they reach their intended audience?
Since Onami Games is quite young, it will be a problem factor when it comes to marketing. We are planning to utilize Reddit, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube for Marketing mainly. Other than that, we are focusing on the quality more, so that it gets a chance to stand out and self promote itself through word of mouth among the gaming community.
What unique strategies do you employ to stand out in a competitive market?
I am an avid Gamer; I have a total of 12 years of work experience in the Gaming industry. I have good understanding of how usually the gamers would want their game to be, and I incorporate the knowledge and experience I have in implementing their needs. I also make sure that the process flow and the whole experience is not too complex to handle for the gamers.
Could you elaborate on the unique features of Kart Avengers, such as the diplomatic elements and character abilities? How do these enhance game-play?
The Unique Points of Kart Avengers:
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Diplomacy while racing, such as setting bounties on other players if you feel they are being too harsh against you, signing peace treaty to become an ally, and declaring someone as a greater threat too.
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All the Karts and Characters have their own unique skill abilities.
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Extraction Mode: Where You need to extract the queen from the hand of Goblins while racing and competing to be the first one to rescue her.
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Payload Mode: You need to push the Payload towards the opponent’s Racing line, while the opponents will defend it from happening. To push the Payload, you need to be in the radius of Payload Engine and then the engine will move by itself.
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Vanilla Kart Mode: It’s a general racing mode, where the main aim is to just reach the victory line and win the race.
What inspired the concept behind Kart Avengers?
I remember that when I was young and in a very early stage when I intrigued in the Game development journey. I usually used to play games like Beach Buggy Racing and Angry Birds Go. I was desperate to find more games like them back then, but it was really hard to find any good substitutes.
Since then it’s been a decade when I have finally started Onami Games, I first wanted to start with Mobile Games. Most of the Genre are quite contently and too crowded when it comes to mobile games. It’s hard to compete and get fame when similar things are already there. It just becomes another rat race.That’s why I decided to venture in the the Kart Genre, which is quite popular and there is a bit less competition too. Making a Kart Game requires fantastic grade artists, creative minds and passionate coders, which many devs who chase behind quick bucks avoid. At Onami we have some quality artists and devs, and I have fully utilized that opportunity to create something unique and with better quality too.
Copying something or making a clone game has always been against my morale. We are following Kart Genre, but everything else game wise is different and unique. In Kart Avengers, the Karts and Characters both have got skills, PVP oriented, and no matter how much you feel like you are getting behind, you can still have a chance to win by taking a proper diplomatic action at any time during the game.