Nikhil Malankar

Recently my first self published book went live on Amazon. This is my second published book. The book’s title is ‘How To Market Your Game Like A Pro And Make Money’. My first book was published by Packt Publishing and it was focused on developing an Android game. I wrote that book in 2016 and the entire process was extremely fascinating for me. To see those pages of book getting filled one by one and coming together in the shape of a book was something extremely satisfying to go through.

So I definitely was pulled back towards this process of writing a book because I genuinely love writing. But this time I wanted to write on something different than development and that’s when I started wondering what would be the topic for my next book. I revisited my career and asked myself what was one pain point I faced myself in the gaming industry. The one answer I got loud and clear was that of marketing games.

There are tons of tutorials available on the internet related to development of games but rarely any reliable sources that talk about how to effectively market your games. I have been in this industry since 2011 and have experimented a lot related to marketing my games throughout my career. I have made many mistakes related to marketing and have learned amazing insights through them.

I have also worked as a Tech Lead for a year and while working at Talking Pixels for this position I learned incredible insights related to how to improve engagement and retention for your games. When I started making games in 2011 I have absolutely no idea about how to make games, let alone market them. By 2013 I had developed my first game and successfully launch it on Google Play Store. As beginner’s luck my first game did incredibly well compared to the expectations I had for it. My first game, Kyte – Kite Flying Game, crossed over 10,000 downloads within it’s first week of launch in 2013 and since then has seen decent growth. Till date the game has crossed over 400,000 downloads and is one of the few kite flying games on Google Play Store.

After this game I worked on few other titles but none of them came anywhere close to the success that my kite game enjoys to this date. That’s when I started questioning what exactly was going wrong but could not figure out exactly what it was. Things became clear when I started working at my job at Talking Pixels where I learned valuable lessons related to game analytics. That’s when I realised that all this while my games didn’t have proper analytics integrated in them and that is the reason why I could not understand how to improve their gameplay.

This is when I decided of taking all of my experience of the last 7 years or so and write them all down in a book which will help developers understand the importance of marketing games. I decided for this book to be a self help guide for developers which will even tell them exactly when to start promoting their games.

There is also a lot of confusion as to why games don’t get downloads and even I faced this problem many times as to how to improve my games downloads. There are many companies out there that provide fake downloads for your game but that only serves as a vanity number and does not help your game’s long term. In fact, it severely hurts the long term of your game since these users are mostly fake and are not interested in playing your game. This is why I have also mentioned the entire process of acquiring users through 100% legal ways which will get you real users that will help you improve your game’s ranking.

All in all I understand what problems developers face and so I have taken into consideration all the major pain points I personally faced as well as have tried to address a lot of conf...

Virtua Cop 2 or more popularly known as VCop2 was a popular shooting game. It was an arcade rail shooter game which means that you had no control on the character’s movement and could only control when your character could shoot. It was wildly popular in the late 90s. VCop2 was released for PC in 1997 and was an absolute amazing experience to play. I would like to talk further about this game  and what made it so enjoyable.

This game was also released for those old school arcade gaming machines installed in malls. I played this game on my Windows system and this was one of the early games I ever played. It featured 3 playable characters namely Rage, Smarty and Janet.

Fun thing about this game was that it wasn’t an entirely linear experience. The game gave you choice at certain location to choose which path you want to go through. I found that very interesting and because of this I used to play through the same level again and again in order to see what other ways were available to play through.

You pass through levels in a very linear way though as you are presented with waves of enemies that you need to shoot down. Be careful though, as you have to make sure that you don’t accidentally shoot down civilians. You have 5 lives that are represented as badges on the bottom left of the screen along with your ammo count. As you shoot your ammo decreases and you need to reload after each round gets consumed. This game mechanic made it quite an intense experience as you had to manage your ammo properly otherwise you’d get shot at.

You also had various guns to collect throughout the game. These guns were hidden behind certain objects that you had to shoot down. So every time you played the game and shot at new objects in the same level you could find new guns or power ups. This exploration aspect of discovering something new every time you played through the same level added in to the intrigue factor for gamers who were ready to play through the entire game just to find these hidden objects.

In total there were 3 levels in this game. At the end of each level you were faced with a Boss fight and an extra Boss battle after completing all the 3 levels.

But really what made this game so fun to play was that you were offered the choice to choose two different paths at certain crossroads and each of these path offered a unique experience of it’s own. My personal favourite was the train level where you had to shoot waves of enemies while walking from one compartment to the next.

After a few play throughs you become an expert and can instantly recognise which enemy will pop up from which side and there by gain multipliers for playing perfectly.

This game was an absolute joyride to play as it offered so much. Nineties were so awesome. It was the time where games were these complete experiences without interruption by ad walls or in-app purchases that limit your gameplay. You used to pay a full price and for that you would get an entire experience that you would remember forever.

Although the graphics of this game are nowhere near to that of games in today’s times but Virtua Cop 2 is still a really good game. Have you played Virtua Cop 2? If you haven’t then I highly recommend you to try it out. You’ll have a lot of fun, I guarantee it! Let me know your thoughts if you have played this game through the comments section.

That’s it for my thoughts on Virtua Cop 2. I look forward to hear your thoughts on the same.

Also, if there is some game you’d like me to talk about then let me know that as well. I’ll try to cover that in my upcoming posts.

So with this thought I’ll end it here. Hope you liked my two cents. If you are a game developer I’d like to inform you that currently I’m working on a book which will talk about how to market your games to get downloads and make money through them. If you are interested in this book then make sure you sign up on my email subscribers li...

Midtown Madness is one of the first classic PC games that offered an open world experience to drive in. I remember playing this game for countless number of hours just cruising through the city of Chicago. It was an escape from reality for me and to this date I can pick this game up anytime and start playing almost endlessly. So in this post I would like to talk more about this game and what made it so fun to play.

What makes this game so fascinating for me personally is that I recently found out that the game was actually developed by Rockstar Games San Diego branch. Rockstar Games is one of my most favourite game developers and their game GTA Vice City changed my life. I have written an entire post for this so you can check that out. Anyway, so that’s about the development tidbit. Let’s come to the gameplay aspect.

This game was launched in 1999 which made it a transition from the 90s to the 2000s. The game had 4 game modes: Blitz, Circuit, Checkpoint and Cruise. My favourite mode out of these was the Cruise mode. This mode allowed you to roam the entire city freely without having any restriction on time or without being forced to participate in any races.

You start off with 5 cars and 5 more are available to unlock. Unlocking these cars require you to complete certain set of tasks such as coming in the top 3 positions in certain game modes and stuff like that. There are two Ford Mustangs in the game, one is a cop car and another is a civilian car. The civilian Ford Mustang was my favourite car in this game as it’s controls felt great.

There is also a dashboard camera view of the game that added in another layer of authenticity to the driving aspect of the game as it felt quite as if you actually in the car while driving around. My favourite dashboard view was of VW Beetle as it also had a small flower on it’s dashboard and looked quite clean as well.

The weather system of this game was perfect. In Cruise mode you could actually set the time of day to play in as well as the weather. You had sunny, rainy, cloudy and snowy weathers and could play during sunrise, afternoon, sunset and night time. Blitz, Circuit and Checkpoint modes have their own specific time of the day and weather to play in.

Midtown Madness included an option to remove pedestrians, as they do not alter gameplay but may affect system performance when in a group; The best part about this game is that it does not require a 3D graphics card either.

The absolutely amazing aspect of this game was definitely the ability to be able to drive around anywhere freely in the Cruise mode. It was also reported that the developers of this game asked Chicago residents to actually play test the game to ensure that the city was recreated faithfully. However, of course, there are certain buildings that we slightly relocated in order to enhance gameplay.

Some of the cheats of this game were also quite hilarious. There was this cheat through which you could turn all the trains into flights and flights into UFOs as well. There was also a cheat code that allowed you to throw mailboxes every time you honked.

I also had a lot of fun driving my car on top speed and jumping from over the bridge that used to open and close. If you failed to cross the bridge and fell into the Chicago river then you were shown a message of “Sleep with the fishes!”. Sometimes I used to purposely used to find specific angles to launch my car into the water if my car got damaged a lot.

I also remember playing this game with my cousins. In vacations they used to come over at my place and we used to take turns playing in the cruise mode. Whenever the car got completely damaged we passed on the turn to the other person in sequence. It was a ton of fun to play this way and we used to make wacky commentary while the other person was playing in order to make them laugh so they would crash their cars faster.

The Elder Scrolls V or popularly known as Skyrim has a vast open world map. This game was suggest to me to be reviewed by Amritanshu Verma. I played Skyrim in early 2012. The fact that it was an open world game was enough for me to get instantly interested in it since I am a huge fan of that genre.

Skyrim boasts of a massive open world environment in which you can travel for hours and hours at end. The graphics of this game might not come off to be as realistic but surely are quite immersive for the genre. However, the modding community of this game is extremely active and there are mods that can help you enhance graphics of this game and make it hyper realistic.

But perhaps what makes this game most awesome is that we actually get to fight dragons. How badass is that, right? You start this game as a dragon born who possesses these magical shouts known as “Thu’um”. Each shout contains three words in the language spoken by dragons, and the strength of the shout will vary depending on how many words have been spoken. The words to shouts can be learned by visiting “word walls” in dungeons or around the wilderness. The words to each shout are unlocked for use by spending the absorbed souls of slain dragons. A regeneration period limits the player’s use of shouts in gameplay.

You actually have to travel through the rich world of Skyrim to find and defeat dragons. Skyrim is just one of the worlds of the dense Elder Scrolls series. It is set around 200 years after the events of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion but isn’t a sequel to it per say.

The game starts with you being taken in a carriage to a place where you are to be executed but are saved in the nick of time because a dragon arrives at the place exactly before your execution. Now, in all honesty, I haven’t completed Skyrim since I got so lost in just wandering through the open world that I could not focus myself on the main storyline. But through what I know, the entire game is about ultimately defeating Alduin who is the first dragon created by Akatosh in order to destroy man and consume the world.

Personally playing this game was also a visual treat because it has such a variety of different terrains, caves, mountains and villages to explore. There are countless number of people to interact with and have meaningful conversations as well as some repetitive memes. *insert I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow in the knee meme*

You also have companions that follow you around and carry items for you, assist you in combat and more. It is overall a very fun experience and be warned that can also suck in a lot of hours away from you. The game really has a lot of depth in it with branching storylines, quests and so much to collect.

It is estimated that the gameplay of Skyrim is roughly around 300 hours which is a staggering 12.5 days to finish the entire game. However, because of the procedurally generated quests it is virtually impossible to say that you’d ever truly finish the game 100% since there’s always something or the other to do in the game.

And that’s what makes this game such an addictive experience. Skyrim is truly one of the best medieval games ever game. And the open world environment that the game is based in gives this game the justice it deserves. It is almost impossible to imagine this game as a linear experience since the entire game is truly about all the different choices you make that shape the game’s outcome.

You can ride horses or even hire horse carriages to take you to places. The game also has a fast travel feature that helps you quickly travel to places marked on maps. Sometimes traveling such long distances can get extremely boring or may be you might encounter some other quest along the way that might distract you from the current quest at hand. In situations like this the fast travel feature really helps out.

I’ve loved playing games since I was a kid. My world basically revolves around games since I can sort of relate every year of my life with one game that totally defined it. Over the years I have played many many games and have had really special memories attached with some of them. I would like to talk about my top 10 favourite pc games of all time. Let’s begin! This is going to be exciting. I will tell you about the game as well as what made it so special. Alright, also I will be doing another list of Top 25 of my most favourite games on my birthday coming next year on 31st March, 2019 so be sure to stay updated with my posts and subscribe to me everywhere so you don’t miss out. So without further ado, let’s begin!

10. Mass Effect 2

This game by Bioware is an absolute masterpiece. I played this game in around 2012 and was absolutely flabbergasted by it’s sheer brilliance. What is more interesting is that every action you take in this game shapes your storyline differently. Every decision you take matters and the game offers you with an extremely flexible way of being either morally right or wrong. You have to face consequences for all your actions. I found that extremely interesting about this game.

9. Road Rash

Of course, this game stays a classic in every 90s kids memories. I basically grew up with this game. I remember this game was so popular back in my childhood days that almost wherever I could find I computer this was the game that was always on it. It was an absolute joy ride to play this game and unlock different bikes and using cheat codes. Remember XYZZY SPOON Shift+1?

8. Midtown Madness

This was another classic in every 90s kids memory. This game had a lot of game modes but perhaps my favourite mode was it’s Cruise mode. To just pick up a car and drive through Chicago city while listening to my favourite songs was an absolutely amazing experience.

7. Roller Coaster Tycoon 2

This game will be etched in my memories as one of the most social experiences for myself primarily because I used to play this game with a bunch of my school friends. We used to gather together at one of our friend’s place and start building the park of our dreams. Even when I wasn’t playing with friends I remember spending countless number of hours perfecting the economy of my park and registering profits! It was the first game that gave me a taste of entrepreneurship in a way.

6. God Of War 3

I had not played the earlier God Of War games however I had heard a great deal of good things about the franchise. I was a bit skeptical about playing a linear narrative though and so wasn’t sure if I’d actually enjoy this button mashing experience. But when I started the game I simply couldn’t put the controller down. I still have to play God Of War 4. I’ll find time for that soon. I’ve seen a few trailers of the game and it looks drop dead gorgeous!

You can find an in-depth review of mine for this game here.

5. Uncharted 2

Uncharted 2 was a great experience for me because of it’s rich environments. The game is so good looking that it felt almost as if I was journeying with Nathan Drake, the protagonist of the game. Solving puzzles, collecting artefacts and exploring about history made this game extremely interesting. The rich graphics of this game kept me hooked on to it but unfortunately all good things come to an end. This game is a linear experience and so after the game was over I felt very empty.

4. Far Cry 3

I played Far Cry 3 very late. I think around 2014. Before this I didn’t have a PC that could support this game so as soon as I bought a new laptop with my first earnings this was the game I knew I had to play. And so began my quest as Jason Brody in the dense forests of Rakyat to liberate the island. The villain of this game is truly a masterpiece.

Every hardcore gamer knows about Rockstar Games. It has become a massively successful company thanks to it’s Grand Theft Auto franchise. They have also launched a couple of other games under their belt and one such rare gem was L.A. Noire. This game was originally developed by Australian developer Team Bondi and they had used some really amazing motion capture technology for it’s characters. However, shortly after the game’s launch, this company shut down. L.A. Noire was launched in May, 2011 under publisher Rockstar Games and Team Bondi shut down in October, 2011.

The game took almost 7 years for development and there were a lot of controversies behind the development of this game. However, in this post we will not be talking about all those controversies. Instead, we will be taking a closer look at all the amazing things that were achieved by this smash hit crime drama games set in the 40s.

In this game you play as Detective Cole Phelps who is a part of LAPD and are tasked with various missions to solve cases that include homicide, vice, arson and traffic related crimes. You get these cases through multiple desks dedicated for particular types of cases and with each case you partner up with someone new to solve it.

The game has great attention to detail as it is a detective game. To investigate each case you actually have to go to the crime scene and look for evidence. As you keep finding evidence the case starts to become more and more clear and through a series of witty decision making you are able to progress through the game.

This game was a breath of fresh air in comparison to the other GTA titles launched by Rockstar Games since you had to play as a detective. You could no longer run over people mindlessly without consequences. To add to the authentic retro theme the developers had also added in a black and white mode through which you could play the entire game in black and white mode. It just felt as if you were transported back to retro times.

Solving cases made you go from one place to another and sometimes you also had to revisit the crime scene multiple times to find new evidence. But perhaps the part that defined this game’s brilliance was it’s interrogations.

The game allowed you to interrogate suspects and judge for yourself if the suspect was lying or not. You could guess this based on the suspect’s body language and facial expressions. If the person was moving their eyes rapidly or smirking while giving you certain information then he or she was lying about it. You are required to pay close attention to the facial expressions. The development team had used cutting edge motion capture technology that very well portrayed facial expressions flawlessly and allowed you to make out whether or not they are lying.

The game also had an amazing soundtrack that went extremely well with the time frame it was based it. It was so good that it also won the award for Best Original Score at the BAFTA Video Game Awards of 2012.

This is what makes L.A. Noire one of the finest games out there as it boldly experimented with this technology and integrated in the game flawlessly. It is sad that we might not get to see a second version of this game since the company who developed is no longer active. However, I have some hopes that publisher Rockstar Games might rope in another developer to make it’s sequel primarily because Rockstar Games likes to have multiple franchises of the same game and with each new addition there is almost something extremely innovative that we can expect from Rockstar Games.

L.A. Noire is a brilliant game and is a timeless classic. You can pick up the game anytime, enter the shoes of Cole Phelps  and start solving crimes. Once you finish the main story line there is also an additional DLC that you can play through and complete missions. This game was launched as a standalone single player experience and was truly a masterpiece in it’s own right.

God Of War series is the finest mythology action game that has ever been created. This game was suggested to be reviewed by Tushar Makwana. My experience with this series started by playing the game’s 3rd instalment. I haven’t tried any other games in this series but would definitely love to since I had such an amazing time in God Of War 3. So here I’d like to talk a bit about this game and what I feel makes it so good.

Before I start with the review of this game I would like to share a funny personal incident that happened while playing this game. So while I was playing this game we were in sort of a shifting mess. Everything was helter-skelter. I was playing God Of War 3 in this mess in a very cramped space and my mom suddenly came in between.

She saw me playing the game but was sort of confused what I was doing. She thought that I was watching a movie since the game’s graphics are quite realistic and so casually asked what movie I was watching? I told her politely that it wasn’t a movie. It’s a game. So she asked me what is the game all about? I was kind of delightfully surprised primarily because my mom never took interests in the games I played. I started explaining her what the game is all about and told her that it’s a game about killing Gods.

She got furious and asked me to shut down the game immediately. We Indians take our Gods too seriously and anything that causes harm to them is considered a great offence. But well, this game was all about that. As Kratos, you yourself are the God Of War. And so I started to think of how I can convince my mom to let me continue playing this game. Suddenly out of nowhere I told her in a very charming way that don’t worry these aren’t Hindu Gods, these are foreign Gods. And that sort of calmed her down. Fortunately after that immediately the whistle of cooker blew in the kitchen and she got engrossed in cooking dinner for us.

Remembering that incident still cracks me up at times. Anyway, so coming back to the game. I’ll give you a spoiler alert over here as I will be talking about specific plot points of this game. God Of War 3 has an amazing storyline. You go through a series of mind challenging puzzles and button mashing sessions to pass through tough bosses all the while gazing at how gorgeous the game looks.

God Of War 3 Review

There are parts of this game that look so stunning that it’d be hard to believe that it’s a game and not a movie. The sheer scale of all the Gods we fight against coupled with those magnificent monuments in Ancient Greek mythology adds in an authentic flavour to the game. Many Mythological characters such as Hermes, Athena, Hades, Helios, Aphrodite are portrayed so good through the game and their dialogues are extremely well written.

The entire premise of the game is for Kratos to take revenge on Zeus for betraying him. But before taking his revenge on Zeus he has to go against multiple other Gods. Zeus is considered as the God of all Gods and so killing him won’t be easy. By the end of this game Athena, who had previously sacrificed herself to save Zeus from Kratos tells Kratos that her sacrifice has brought her to a higher existence, and she now sees truths she did not see before. She states that as long as Zeus reigns, there is no hope for mankind. She gives him the Blades of Exile and says that he must extinguish the Flame of Olympus to kill Zeus. After finding the three Judges of the Underworld and the Chain of Balance, Kratos encounters the spirit of Pandora, whom he mistakes for his dead daughter, Calliope. Refusing to help the child, he continues his quest. After encountering the Olympian blacksmith Hephaestus and recovering the Blade of Olympus, he kills Hades and releases the souls of the Underworld. He considers searching for Calliope’s soul, but Athena reminds Kratos of his quest, and he leaves the Underworld, arriving at Olympia, where he finds the wounded Gaia, who calls for help.

In 2014 I got my hands on The Last Of Us game. It is one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time and playing it is a whole new level of an emotional journey. There are many things I learnt from this game and in this video I am going to talk about those things.

The Last Of Us is a game that has had an extremely profound effect on me. I should give you a spoiler alert before you read the entire post. If you haven’t played the game yet there are some specific plot points I will be talking about so if you are interested in playing the game then I’d suggest you to stop right here and play the game before continuing from here.

That been said, the game is this story of what would happen if a zombie infestation happened in our world. It is an action-adventure survival horror game that takes you through an immensely emotional storyline and it’s gameplay keeps you gripped for hours at end. The gameplay of this game is roughly around 17 hours and all through the game you are emotionally invested in the game.

This game taught me about our survival instincts. It takes you through these devastated environments and all the while you keep looking around through the beautiful environments you can’t help but wonder what we have done to our world and how very beautiful it would really be without us intruding with it’s natural habitat and just let nature thrive on it’s own. The game looks drop dead gorgeous.

It’s storyline is so well written that within the first 15 minutes I cried. The game is a perfect example of how we humans face tragedy and shows us a perfect mirror of our survival tactics.

The Last of Us Ending, when Joel lies to Ellie about the Fireflies and tells her that there was no cure. It was such an emotional moment. It was almost as if in that moment you were not playing as the protagonist, it felt as though you were the antagonist. I couldn’t help but keep thinking about the choice made by Joel by the end of the game and I wondered what would I have done in his shoes? I would have probably done the same. When Ellie asks him to swear to her if this was the truth Joel looks her in the eyes and lies as if he does not care about the choice he made. It was almost a tragic decision that costed the end of entire humanity since Ellie was the cure. But Joel cared more about Ellie’s survival than the survival of the entire human race. He saw his own daughter in Ellie and he had already lost his own daughter before the zombies took over the entire world.

We are all a bit like Joel. Most of us have this emotional side to us which would do anything to protect the people whom we love the most from the world. In some cases the whole world be damned, we become extremely selfish at times. But that’s basically our survival instincts that make us behave that way. We only care about the things that we have developed a bond with. Everything else can go to hell.

Also there is this amazing giraffe scene. If you ask what is your favourite scene from the game to anyone who has played it most probably 90% of the answer will be the giraffe scene. It was perhaps the most magical moment in that game. The take away from that scene is simply this, the world is better without human interference. If we don’t interfere with nature and end our quest for expanding further and further only then nature will thrive and turn this planet into a living paradise. It taught me that we can live in harmony with nature. There is no rush. That scene in the game felt extremely relaxing. It felt as if I could sit there forever just marvelling at the beauty of nature.

All in all I loved this game to the maximum. I usually avoid playing games that are a linear experience and because of the same reason I was avoiding to play this game but after I played it there was no looking back. I absolutely fell in love with this game and it will stay in the Top 10 list of the games that I loved the most.

PlayerUnknown’s Battleground or popularly known as PUBG has taken the gaming world by storm ever since it was launched. Recently they launched a mobile version of their game which furthermore boosted their user base significantly. Let us try to dissect this game and understand why exactly it has become such a big deal.

PUBG has sort of established a genre of it’s own called Battle Royale. The central theme of this game is survival, you versus 99 other people. It touches upon our basic human instinct of survival. Before it’s release on mobile the game was available on PC platform on Steam for a premium price. Originally launched by PUBG Corporation A Bluehole Company, this game has grown by leaps and bounds and has even given a tough competition to it’s competitor Fortnite. It is a genre defining game of it’s own kind and has seen massive growth in terms of it’s player base since it’s launch.

The gameplay of PUBG starts with a lobby area where you are technically immortal. You stand in the lobby for a few seconds before the actual gameplay starts. You can actually beat players here without killing them. It is quite a hilarious scenario to watch players hitting each other mindlessly and is also quite fun in itself. In this stage you have no resources with you. When you start playing the game in the very beginning you don’t even have clothes!

Once the waiting time is over you are then put on a plane that takes you to the fighting arena which is basically a huge island filled with houses and hideouts where you can find resources for survival and fighting. As you progress through the game you start collecting weapons, clothes, med kits and more. But here’s where the real fun starts. As you are finding resources for survival so are 99 other people. And when a player confronts another player in this game the only outcome is survival of one of them. So you need to make sure you have all the right weapons with you that are necessary for your survival.

Not just that, you might be wondering that since the island is so huge can’t we just pick a spot and keep hiding at one place till the very end? Well, technically yes. You can use this survival tactic but that might not always work because of the death circle. The death circle is actually an area in which you have to be in at all times. This circle is huge at first and covers almost the entire island but as time goes by it goes on decreasing. If you are out of the circle your health starts to deteriorate rapidly and eventually you die.

You also see in real-time that which players are getting eliminated or killed. The game so deeply engrosses you in it that it actually gives you a feeling of survival as you go through houses collecting items, hear footsteps of players approaching you, drive cars around and sometimes over other players. It’s simply mind blowing!

This game has become massively popular because it can be extremely relatable to our evolution. As humans, we are always taught a basic principle, survival of the fittest. And that is what the entire game is based on. When you win this game by being the only player to survive you are greeted with, “Winner Winner Chicken Dinner”. There are global stats for players and rankings based on how you have played the game.

One game play session can easily last up to 30-40 minutes if you are able to survive till the end. All your cognitive skills are put to use while playing PUBG and the adrenaline rush you get after surviving through each phase is quite rewarding in itself. You could almost easily say that you don’t play this game as much to win as much you don’t want to lose. It all boils down to just two words: survival tactics in PUBG.

The game was released for Microsoft Windows through Steam’s early access in March 2017, with a full release on December 20, 2017. And in the same month, it was also released by Microsoft Studios for the Xbox One through its Xbox Game Preview program,

I started playing Clash Royale this year itself. Earlier I had heard a lot about Clash Of Clans success but never really played that game to a level where I got addicted to it but then they launched a new game titled Clash Royale which looked kind of boring to me at first but when I actually started playing it I realised how truly addictive this game was.

A lot of people still confuse between the two games Clash Of Clans and Clash Royale. These two are indeed two different games launched by the same developer, Supercell. I had absolutely no idea that I would end up getting so addicted to Clash Royale.

To give you a short introduction of the game play of this game I would say that it is a simple online player versus player game where you have to strategically place units that will attack on your behalf and the player who destroys their opponents all 3 towers first is the winner. You can also play the 4 player mode wherein you team up with another person and together you two fight against the other two opponents. That’s it. That is basically the entire core game play of the game.

Now what adds in a layer of interesting element in the game is that the game play remains the same, destroy 3 towers and win, but the way you destroy those 3 towers differs. This differentiation is brought with the help of a wide variety of units that you get through cards. You start with Arenas which are basically adjusted as per the ratio of matches you win or lose. As you keep on winning matches you progress through multiple levels of Arenas. But if you lose a lot then your level drops down as well and you are forced to play in a lower arena.

The really interesting thing I found about this game is that this game restricts you to play the game but at the same time does not restrict you to play the game either. How does it manage to do that? Well, simple. In a specific number of hours you can only open few chests. You get these chests only if you win against the opponent. However, you only have slots to store 4 chests and each chest has a time that you need to wait to unlock.

If you run out of inventory space to store a chest you can still play the game but you won’t be able to progress through the game primarily because everything depends on what cards you get from these chests. There are a different variety of chests to unlock such as the wooden chest, silver chest, golden chest and more. The better the chest the longer the waiting time. For some chests you need to wait for almost more than 8 hours at times to just unlock the contents of that chest. This technique is called the “Gacha” system.

Gacha System

Gacha system basically tricks players into an invisible pull that gets created in the mind of the player. Once you click on unlock chest you are bound to come back to the game in order to check what you have unlocked. The game also notifies you when your chest is ready to get unlocked. Don’t like to wait? Well, you can then purchase gems through in-game currency and spend it in the game to skip waiting for long hours.

Because of this gacha system implemented in a brilliant way, the game’s monetisation is extremely strong. It is reported that this game crossed over $1 billion in revenue within it’s first year of launch. That’s mind blowing, isn’t it?

This game is a classic example of how you can trick players into getting addicted to your game. However, this addiction can be quite dangerous as well. People play this game for hours and hours together. Sometimes some people even play multiple matches even when their chest slots are full just to get that quick fix of adrenaline for their mind. People go as far as adjusting their entire day according to the timing of their chests being unlocked. They religiously check and play the game for a couple of minutes before sleeping so they can earn a chest and then keep that chest to get unlocked through the night.