Playing It Risky: Meet Socioball, a Premium Puzzle Game From India

Games from Indian developers are, by and large, free-to-play and casual experiences and that makes a lot of sense from a business perspective. What's missing is fully thought out premium experiences that will appeal to gamers. So when we heard about Socioball, an upcoming premium puzzle game being made in India, we were naturally curious. The game is all about solving puzzles to guide balls into goals, which explains half the name.

The "socio" part of the name refers to social media. Social networks are the new face of the Internet, and there's very little room on and off the Internet where you won't be greeted by a logo from Facebook, Twitter, or the latest flavour of the week like Wire and Ello. They've also become a part of gaming, but only in a primitive fashion. Games embrace social media in a variety of ways, ranging from Candy Crush Saga allowing its users to spam your Facebook wall for in-game rewards, to the PlayStation 4 letting you tweet screenshots from any game you're playing.

Socioball however uses Twitter to change the game you're playing, by allows users to share the puzzles they've created on the microblogging platform in a frictionless manner. If you're an active Twitter user whose friends make levels in Socioball, then you can count on them keeping you busy with new puzzles all the time. Fiddling around with Socioball's level editor made us realise that it could be a game changer if used well. It's extremely easy to create a puzzle and even easier to share it.

The isometric, tile-based game features balls that roll forward at the press of a button, which you need to direct to goal tiles. To do this, you need to place action tiles along the ball's path. There's a slick-looking user interface and a minimal look and feel that betrays the fact that it's a game made in India. Most local efforts sport cluttered interfaces, clunky menus and a garish colour scheme that would make 90s Govinda wardrobes seem plain in comparison.

The creators of Socioball, Apoorva Joshi (left) and Shailesh Prabhu (right).

"When we started development we were pretty much sold on the minimal look," says Shailesh Prabhu, designer and founder of Socioball creators Yellow Monkey. "This is because we don't have any artists who can create highly detailed artwork with us. We decided to do what we can do and Apoorva [Joshi] has done an incredible job in making the assets."

Apoorva Joshi is Prabhu's partner in crime for Socioball. The two met at a local game developer conference and hit it off immediately.

"When we started off with this game I was pretty honest in saying that if it was to be freemium I would not be the right guy," says Prabhu. "He was sold on doing it as premium [too] and he was ok with the fact that I can't guarantee him a feature or anything like that so we were basically on the same page."

"It was surprisingly easy for me to work with him," he adds. "We have the same wavelength. It's more about meeting the right kind of people with the right attitude. I think there aren't enough people who are open and just want to work on a fun game."

And it's worked just fine in the case of Socioball. We checked out a pre-release build of the game and came away impressed. It felt organic and cohesive, and as cliched as it sounds, Socioball feels like its been designed by fans of puzzle games for fans of puzzle games.

You're to navigate a ball into a goal and in doing so you're introduced to a variety of tiles that let you navigate the game's grid. These range from letting you change the ball's direction to double jumps. There's a fair bit of trial and error to solving its many conundrums but its never too tough that you'll feel like flinging your phone in frustration.

"It's for a puzzle gamer," says Prabhu. "A casual to hardcore puzzle gamer. It's for those who like fixing things, those with an affinity for Rube Goldberg Machines and stuff like that." But does the lack of handholding and user cues result in a smaller audience? "It goes back to the minimal nature of the game," he says. "It's a puzzle game and puzzle games are about finding solutions so we want the learning to also be about finding solutions. So when you find solutions you learn something new about the mechanics in each level. It's kind of similar to the approach we took with Huebrix where there wasn't too much handholding even there."

Huebrix was the last game from Yellow Monkey and was well received by critics for being a solid puzzle game. Prabhu tells us that the learnings from that game went a long way in making Socioball a better experience.

"With Huebrix we had a lot of levels and we shipped them and we enjoyed it immensely and we also shipped a level editor with Huebrix which very few people actually used," Prabhu says.

"Considering that the concept of this game started with the Twitter integration and not with the gameplay we wanted it to be more socially active in terms of people creating levels and sharing it," he adds. "It was a conscious decision not to put more levels right now but to try to get the community going in terms of creating levels. Obviously, we plan to support the game by tweeting more levels after release and that will not be paid. It will be free levels coming in through Twitter."

With more and more studios looking to release their games as free-to-play experiences, going against the grain could backfire for Socioball since there's always the fear that the audience on mobile might not understand the game.

"With a premium game that's going to happen," says Prabhu. "Most of the sales happen in the first few days and then there will be a drop-off. The only thing we can do is try and elongate the tail and what we plan to do is use the Twitter feature extensively. We are going to tweet levels every week. We're also going to try to get other game designers, globally, to tweet levels. I can't be sure they'll do it but it's an effort I'm going to push."

Since much of what Prabhu wants from his games goes against the conventional wisdom in the industry today, he doesn't expect much publisher interest in the game.

"I don't think publishers would be interested in this game," he says. "Simply because, the way we made it, it's minimal, it's no handholding, it's a premium and those are insta-kills for any publisher. If I show a publisher this game and I can predict a response which kind of goes like, 'hey it is great why don't you make it F2P, why don't you add a block where you have to pay to unlock...' and we don't want to do that with this game."

With Socioball out next month we won't have to wait too long to find out if Prabhu is right, or the conventional wisdom of the industry.