The Nashik based studio – Xaxist Arts – on 1 May released its new game offering on iTunes AppStore called ‘Rolling Zimro’. It is a super fast action game with first of its kind spinning worlds. The game has beautiful low-poly art style and has intuitive controls specifically designed for the touch devices. ‘Rolling Zimro’ has also been shortlisted for the Indie Prize Showcase which is to be held at Casual Connect Asia, Singapore this May.
“The game is really close to my heart and it took me nearly 16 months to develop it from the scratch,” says Xaxist Arts CEO and founder Anup Sarode. “Actually I developed this game out of sheer boredom as I was getting tired of the mundane work that I was doing. I always wanted to get into gaming big time, and I guess with this venture I am getting into it.”
The story of the game speaks about Planet Smoraah, which is dying, and the Smongs on the planet are left with some sacred wisdom leaves, but not enough. Zimro from Earth is the only one who knows how to grow these scared plants and King Smong has ordered to capture Zimro and the Smongs have invaded planet earth.
The user takes control of Zimro, a young boy from the countryside. And can get him to run, jump, slide and even fly through each game. Tapping the left part of screen makes Zimro jump and tapping right part of the screen makes him slide. Holding the screen for longer makes him jump higher or slide longer.
Sarode reveals: “Actually I was very much inspired by the game
play of ‘Jetpack Joyride’ and ‘Monster Dash’ from Halfbrick Studios and thus wanted to use it for my runner game. The best part is that both are very polished games and I wanted to create a great quality game as well, thus it took so much of time.”
The goal of the game is to stay alive as long as you can while dodging the deadly obstacles and hitting the furious Smongs along the run. You start with three lives for each round, and if you run into an enemy or obstacle, you lose a life. If you lose all of your lives the “endless runner” game ends.
While the game is in fast spinning action, the user will encounter some really cool power-ups which when collected gives Zimro ability to fly, ride a bicycle, become a superhero and slowdown the game and collect munchies with a magnet. During each run, you have to collect as many munchies as possible. The game also features a shop section called as ‘The Stash’ where the player can trade the collected munchies to buy extremely useful power-ups and utilities to score more. A good strategy is required while buying the power-ups to get a high score.
“I used the software called Unity 3D, which is a cross-platform game engine with a built-in IDE developed by Unity Technologies. It is used to develop video games for web plugins, desktop platforms, consoles and mobile devices. It grew from an OS X supported game development tool in 2005 to a multi-platform game engine,” expounds Sarode. “I also ended up using Cocos2D-iPhone, which is an open-source framework for building cross-platform 2D games with Xcode and Objective-C. And I am pretty much glad with the outcome.”
Every time when the game starts, the player gets a new game with a different world to play. In all, there are three scenic low poly worlds. The arrangement of obstacles and enemies is procedurally generated and the game becomes more difficult as it progresses. The speed of the game and the spinning worlds makes the game very trippy.
The game features in app purchases, using which the player can buy munchies in bulk. After every game play, he/she can share his/her score to popular social networks to get some free munchies. More free munchies can be grabbed by following the social accounts of the Xaxist Arts. One can also compete with friends online using the Game Center Leaderboard and unlock about 36 crazy achievements. The soundtrack is quite energetic and complements the fast action in the game.
“I had initially approached Apple with the game but was rejected a couple of times because they were not too comfortable with the name ‘Rolling Dooby’ and also the reference to Marijuana in the game play, but once we changed that they were keen to support it,” he reveals.
The app is 41.7 MB is size and currently priced at $1.99 (or equivalent amount in other currencies) and is available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in Games category. The device requirements are: at least iPad 2, iPhone 4S, iPod Touch (5th gen), or newer; or iOS 4.3 or later; and it’s optimised for iPhone 5.
Sarode ends: “I am currently busy with promoting the game in my own way, and I am glad to speak to AnimationXpress.com on this and hope the game does well. We will try and get it on Android in two months time and looking at the response will further develop it for other platforms as well.”