Bollywood actor-director-producer-singer Farhan Akhtar is all set to venture into a new medium today with the launch of his first mobile game Fukrey: Rooftop Runner.
The game has been created under a new collaboration between Excel Entertainment and Dubai-based Riva Group of Companies that has been involved in creating animations, visual effects and designs in multiple streams.
“Fukrey: Rooftop Runner is our first launch but will be followed by a non-film-based game Feed The Sparrow – which Farhan has written – in December,” explained Ritesh Sidhwani, Akhtar’s partner in the venture. “Fukrey [the film] is set in Delhi and the game is also based on the rooftops of these buildings in East Delhi. It was a popular film so, we feel the game will be fun. Paul [Roy, CEO of Riva Digital] had seen the film before its release and read the script and felt it would be interesting to develop into a game”.
Fukrey: Rooftop Runner is an action/adventure game that depicts the misadventures of four slackers from the film willing to get their hands on big money to achieve their dreams and will retain the irreverent and quirky tone of the movie. The objective as a player will be to collect as many Rupex as possible.
But that sounds like another popular game The Temple Run.
“Yes, the game is an endless runner style of game but it’s completely different from Temple Run,” explained Roy. “Once you download and play it you’ll see it’s a lot more difficult. One of the reasons why we chose Fukrey is because through this collaboration we want to create good games that people will enjoy. Traditionally film-based games haven’t really worked, not even in Hollywood. This film’s topic was what we felt would work very well for a game”.
In comparison to Hollywood films, Indian films have delved only rarely in this sphere because the Indian market is just about waking up to this potential said Akhtar.
“Gaming as an offshoot of films or a as a pastime has evolved a lot later in the Indian market as compared to the western world. These are highly budget-driven, in terms of distribution and creation and take time,” explained Akhtar, who was last in the city during Dubai Music Week to perform and introduce B-Blunt, his wife’s hairstyling venture. “Initially we wanted to exploit the product or the film reaching out to the audiences and felt gaming wasn’t really the best option but now with the whole technology that’s available, especially the mobile technology where everyone has a smart phone now that they can access games with. So now is a great time to focus on these areas. What’s happening around us in the technology sphere influences what we can do with our films as opposed to what we can do with the films and then create the technology and give people phones to be able to play the games. There needs to be a broad-based kind of platform available for us to go find ideas for create something, get the right people interested in financing it, distributing it and marketing it”.
Fukrey: Rooftop Runner launches Saturday on Google play store and will be available on iPhone in about two weeks time, said Roy.
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