Hyderabad based ‘Seven Summits Studio’ that was established last year by Asar Dhandala, and ‘Creature Box Studios’ by Anshul Soni are curr
ently working on single player gaming app ‘Just Born’, which focuses on Female Foeticide and the importance of vaccination.
AnimationXpress.com will bring you a tete- a- tete tomorrow with Anshul of Creature Box on the studio’s debut game, and meanwhile we caught up with Asar to get a sneak peek of ‘Just Born’ and he starts the conversation with us by saying,”
“Female Foeticide has been extensively documented in the media 
and various other forms but has never been conveyed through an interactive medium like Gaming.”
Hi Asar, introduce us to Seven Summits Studio and the works done till date?
Sure, Seven Summits Studio is an independent game studio. We’re a team of under-graduates, studying Game Design from Backstage Pass – School of Gaming. Initially, the team comprised of Jithin Peter and Aman Agnihotri. For ‘Just Born’, the development team comprises of Anshul Soni, Hansha Pahwa, Rana S including me and Jithin Peter is our mentor.
Pac-Port, our first title was initially a game-jam experiment. Jithin had learned some new tricks in programming and wanted to implement all of them in a game. After giving this a quick thought, I said to him that we’ll combine Pac-Man with Portal. And this also gives the game its name “Pac-Port”. Then we sat down for few days and programmed the game together. It can be downloaded from here
As of now, I’m surprisingly the only guy in the studio and have been developing an experimental title called ‘Petite’ which won the best game award recently at Microsoft’s ‘Dev Camps’ here in Hyderabad. It’s set to release on Android, Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 in April, 2014.
What is ‘Just Born’ all about?
The idea of the game is to spread awareness about Female Foeticide and the importance of vaccination for infants. We address the former issue through the narrative of the game while the latter is promoted through game play.
The protagonist of the game is the vaccination. As the vaccine enter the baby’s body, the liquid turns into a disease fighting organic character. Henceforth, the location of the game will be inside the baby’s body.
Having to battle out with numerous germs, viruses and other deadly diseases in and around various human organs, we hope to give an entertaining and educative experience to the players with the backdrop of serious social issues.
Why did you choose this game play?
The entire game play takes place inside a human body which hasn’t been explored to its full potential yet in any of the games released in the past few years, which in itself can be a very appealing aspect. Though the game is a 3D shooter at its core, we have considerably less competition from the games of the same genre because we plan to introduce new and innovative mechanics in every level in accordance to the organ which the player is in.
The animation medium and targeted audience is?
‘Just Born’ is 3D, shooter game. Target audience would be casual and hardcore gamers above the age of 12. In India, a large number of youngsters and a majority of urban population aren’t exactly aware about the scope this problem; hence we hope to attain their attention. The same can be said about the international demographic well. Barring a few organizations, hardly enough awareness has been raised internationally.
Will it be a free or paid app?
To avoid being in that bracket of unfortunate games, we decided early in the development process that our game will be free to play. As it is today, the most widely used and successful business model in the gaming industry. It opens up our game to a much larger demographic without a doubt. As far monetary profits, we hope to gain profits from “in-game” purchases. Once and when we have a successful game released, which we are confident about, we plan to release further content available to players at a premium.
How is the look and feel like?
We didn’t want to have an ultra-realistic depiction of a human body, for it may carry along a dark, grisly and quite possibly gory feel.
Everything from the characters to the enemies and the environments are based on their real life counterparts except that they are exaggerated by a margin to add to the fun quotient, hence not only the players can associate with the world present in the game (organs, etc.) but also understand the factuality of their purposes with the help of the visuals.
As developers, we would want our game to appeal to as larger demographic as possible. By choosing an neutral ground to avoid not appealing to a certain demographic (gory, cartoony art style) and maximize our audience, while remaining as close as possible to the end product we aspired and imagined to create.
What would you highlight in terms of influences?
Female Foeticide is a major social problem in India and has cultural connections with the dowry system that is ingrained in Indian culture. It is estimated that more than 10 million female foetuses have been illegally aborted in India.
The problem of such mammoth proportion can only be eradicated from its roots by raising a voice against it, together. Increasing awareness of the problem has led to multiple campaigns by celebrities and journalists to combat sex-selective abortions.
This topic has been extensively documented in the media and various other forms but has never been conveyed through an interactive medium, thereby giving us much more visibility and scope in the highly competitive market.
What are the emotions that you would like to bring into the players as they play ‘Just Born’?
We intend to create a fun, safe, visually pleasing and narratively gripping product. Great measure will be taken to avoid disturbing or sensitive content. We also want to avoid a steep learning curve by following the principle of “easy to learn, tough to master”.
Please inform more on the animations one would see?
Having a unique and exciting opportunity to develop a game which takes place inside a human body (majority of it); we had an equally challenging responsibility of creating a game world which convinces the players of their location (in-game). Henceforth, deciding on the stylization of the environment, characters and other assets was sitting high on our priority list. After much consideration, the team unanimously decided on having a semi-realistic art style for the game. Concept art was created and much to everyone’s delight, approval was given.
The reason to go for a semi-realistic styling was quite simple, neither did we wanted a cartoony heavy look nor did we wanted our game to look straight out of a biology text book. The reason for the former option not being opted is that we wanted the players to have a strong sense of visual identity of the various organs located inside a human body. Apart from that the team decided that having a cartoony feel wouldn’t be as impactful as otherwise possible with the ultimate objective of the game that is to spread awareness.
Which software is being used to build this game?
We’re using Autodesk Maya, Pixologic Sculptris and Adobe Creative Suite to create and enhance the art present in the game. From the technical view point, the entire project is being developed in Unity 3D.
Any closing comments?
The game is currently in early Alpha stage. We’re unsure about the launch date at this stage of development. It’s scheduled to release in 2014 for Windows PC and Microsoft Windows 8 (Store).