It took the 10-member team 18 painstaking months to come up with the initial design of their game.
But all the sweat and blood put in by the group of youngsters at Tuttifrutti Interactive, a start-up adventure game studio operating from Piravom-based Technolodge IT park, has paid off. Their game ‘Darkarta: Quest for your lil honey’, has won international accolades and is set to make it to the PlayStation.
The game competed with the products of 83 game developers globally and emerged runner-up in ‘Best in Show: Audience Award’ in the just concluded Casual Connect Asia, an event organised by Casual Games Association, in Singapore this May.
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While the team won a PlayStation4, a bigger prize was in store for them. Koji Toda, Japan-Asia Director of the electronics giant Sony, was so impressed by the game that he offered to publish it for PlayStation.
But, all was not hunky-dory initially. While six team members sweated it out alternatively from their homes and office spaces, one member each flushed out ideas from New Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad even as the music was being created in France by a composer there.
“The fund crunch at the start was such that our team of 10 had to do the work of 15 with minimal resources,” says Ajish G. Habib, CEO, Tuttifrutti Interactive. Undeterred, they pursued their fantasy game themed on black magic hoping to strike it big on the popularity of point and click genre adventure games.
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The game inspired by Puranas revolves around a fictional epic journey of a mother in search of her lost daughter in the process taking gamers through an unforeseen mystic world they haven’t experienced before. So far, the company has mobilised Rs. 26 lakh through angel funding and own investments. “We are looking at raising another Rs. 76 lakh and discussions with some potential investors have been positive,” said Ajish. Promos of the game are already out on YouTube and its market launch is planned for Christmas.