by gSathe
Singh is King, hosted on and created by Games2Win is many things at the same time. On the one hand, it’s a genuinely entertaining game with a clever premise which has to appeal to most Indians, since we’re both obsessed with politics, and mocking politicians.
At the same time, it embodies exactly what is wrong with the game development scene in India, which is a lack of creativity. The fact is that few Indian companies can possibly afford to produce high quality games for the current generation of consoles or PCs. The cost of development for a video game today is higher than that of a major Hollywood movie — and the risks involved even higher.
Most new projects, particularly out of India therefore, can take place only in the market for Casual Games — Online games like those provided by Games2Win for example, where development costs and production time cycles are a lot lower. It’s a field whre a lot of innovation is taking place in the rest of the world, where unique and creative games are being made which redefine the way we look at our pastime, along with faithful recreations of old classics.
But while games like Braid, Flow and Tower of Goo defy genres and make you game in a completely new way (a risk which is only possible in casual games…) others like N+ take established styles and genres, and remake them in a way that makes them better. Sadly, the nature of the internet means that just as for every one video on youtube worth watching, there are a thousand poor imitations, so too with online games, for every one game which does things right, thousands don’t.
Instead we’re left with poor imitations, and the distressing thing about most video games coming out from India today is that they don’t seem to want to try to make something new. Instead they’re happy to take something which has been done to death, top it off with some Indian imagery and call it the next big hit.
There have been thousands of games like Singh is King made and placed online over the last few years, since the casual game market exploded. It’s not a particularly good example of the obstacle runner genre, one of my favourites being Crazy Emu, which kills off your runner in really gory and also hilarious ways… Within the genre, the problem with Singh is King is that the graphics aren’t handled very well — in fact, this seems to be a problem with the hosting on Games2Win overall, since a certain lag seems to be present in every game they have on the site, unlike say armorgames or newgrounds games, which still run very smoothly. The size of the game window is too small for this sort of game, as you have to be able to see what’s coming up to be able to play the game and also the blur effects are overdone, making the game a poor example of the type.
What is driving so many people to play this mediocre example of a genre where all the games are free to play anyway? It’s got Manmohan Singh, slowed down by the nuclear deal and starving farmers, chased by political opponents sitting in a bulldozer who’re out to flatten him. It’s named after a very hyped movie which has just released. It’s an entertaining game genre, and while not a great example, it’s not a bad game either. So it’s getting a lot of hits. And it’s going to be forgotten soon, but that’s the nature of the casual gaming market as well as the weakness of the game.
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