The newest studio from Pune, Dropout Games has just debuted with UnWynd; a puzzler which is based on matchmaking colours and symbols to achieve the combination that is displayed on the top of the screen. Dropout Games was started by two college dropouts who have previously worked on another puzzle game Roto from Lucid Labs and then launched Dropout Games last year. It currently consists of Ankush Madad and Sujeet Kumar.
AnimationXpress spoke to Dropout Games co-founder Ankush Madad on how they formed the company. “Dropout Games was formed in September 2014, after we left Lucid Labs. Since most of the team members in Lucid Labs had completed their college and were doing internships, the team couldn’t stick together. We were not final year students and hence couldn’t do our internships, plus we weren’t happy with the college curriculum, so we dropped out from college and formed our own studio. Sujeet lived in Delhi, so I called him here to Pune and we rented an apartment and decided to work on a few concepts.”
Talking about the game, Ankush elaborates, “Sujeet had prototyped UnWynd in 2013. It was a simple puzzle game that he showed me. We had to do a few changes and we finally started the work on it in December 2014. We worked around the game for about four months. Sujeet did the art and the program for the game, as it was totally his concept and he had everything in mind. I did all the level designs for the game.”
The game currently is available on the Android and Windows app markets with the studio adopting a freemium model on the Google Play store and at a $0.99 price on the Windows phones. It is selling the additional chapters on the Android platform and also offering the players to buy the game for a price, where they can enjoy the game without ads along with the additional chapters. The iOS version of the game is soon to be released once they get approval from Apple App Store.
Probing about the premium vs freemium on Android, Ankush says, “As we had seen The Monument Valley model where 95 per cent of the game on the Android was pirated and if a game like that can’t sell on the Play Store, I don’t know what can. So we’ve opted for a freemium model for the Play Store.”
The audio for the game has been done by Ashley Read, who has previously been associated with the team on Roto and has also done work on various AAA games like Eve Valkyrie and Watch Dogs. “Ashley did audio for Roto and we became very good friends while working on it. We met him online during the making of Roto and he liked the game and agreed to work with us on the game and from there we’ve carried our friendship to UnWynd. He’s done the trailer music and sound effects for this game,” he reveals.
Optimising the game for the Indian audience is very necessary and the game size plays an important part, which can also sometimes determine the download numbers. On why keep it at 32MB he argues: “We tried to reduce the game size as much as we could but that is the least we could achieve. We are still to figure out certain optimisation techniques and bring the size down but I guess 32MB is OK.”
Ankush also speaks about the learnings from Roto and their next game Dotinator. They started Roto as a GameJam game and it won there. Since the game was liked by everyone, the team decided to create the game and finish it.
“Dotinator was pitched to us by our college friend and we liked the concept and while working on UnWynd, we simultaneously started working on the prototype for Dotinator. When I was doing the production and the post-production, my other team-mates started doing the pre-production for the game.
Ending the chat with their future plans, Ankush informs: “After Dotinator we plan to do something big, both in scale and size and maybe we’ll shift to making PC games. We always wanted to start working on PC games but we wanted to get ourselves familiar with the publishing and the know-how of game development and hence we decided to work on the mobile platform first.”
