I remember those days when I used to play building and matching games in my pocket videogame device. However, with the advent of hi-tech gadgets, the video gaming industry has evolved massively. Moreover, sometimes I feel, wish we could relive those 80s and 90s video game vibes in 2019. Guess what Ogre Head Studio recently launched their ‘Ogre Head Minis’ series with the first game, Color Ride.
“Creating Asura was a long term commitment and our next project is even more ambitious, more polished and it takes even longer time frame to let it roll among the audience. The team and I work on tons of prototypes to keep our creative juices flowing. When we saw rays of potential glimmering in these projects, we figured why not work on them a little more and release it for the mass,” said Ogre Head Studio co-founder and director, Zainuddin Fahad .
The idea of launching mini-games popped last year and finally, they launched in 2019. These are small games they create in the studio as prototypes and play during their free time just for fun. As the series name suggests, these are small games usually made in the span of a couple of days or a week by the studio and are fun-sized packages of thrill and entertainment. In conversation with AnimationXpress Fahad expressed that “The plan is not to be out of touch to the audience. Our games are not mostly on the mobile platform and are mostly hardcore gaming. Therefore we rolled out these mini-games to increase the fun element in gaming.”
The first game of the series is Color Ride which is an English car game where one has to merge the colour of the car with the colour of the obstacles in the form of walls. The game style is similar to a popular platform game of the 90s where one has to match the colour of the shooter ball before it collides with that of the series of RGB coloured balls.
Apart from that the game also has an album track which gives the vibe of 80s electro pop music, created by Vishwas. The track can be separately purchased from the game itself. Speaking further about the collaboration Fahad expressed, “Since it is not possible all the time to collaborate with peers for our main games, this is our chance to collaborate with the people within the ecosystem and experiment with our mini-games.”
On asking about the strategy behind the creation of the minis and the time interval of the publishing the game he added “ there is no hard and fast rule for us in creating and publishing the game. There is no strict deadline for it since we also offer services. The idea is to launch games in between two to three months interval.”
Although the studio has lined up two games already. one is likely to launch in the coming week and one more in the next month. The upcoming game which is probably slated for a next week launch ( they are in words with Google play and iOS)is somewhat of “You are sitting with your friend at the coffee shop you are getting bored, then you pick up your phone and both of you starts playing the game with one device with a single screen,” he expressed.
Another uniqueness of their upcoming mini-game is the use of weird, wacky mouth sounds which are funny and created by their in-house team, he says “It can be annoying – it can be funny.”
Color Ride is free to play the game with regular Google ads monetisation scheme, which is similar to a lot of mobile games. The game has in-app purchases to remove the ads from the game. “We are beginning with iOS and Android we want to see how players are responding “he added.
Overall the primary strategy of Ogre head is to launch the games to cherish the fun factor of gaming as well as to engage and feed the audience with consecutive newer mini-games within a small span.