India’s Gaming Horizon: Anticipating the Arrival of Wukong 2D
China’s online gaming sector has experienced significant, worldwide successes in recent years with titles like
“Eighteen percent of the global population resides here, how can we not be represented in one of the primary forms of entertainment?” queries Shalin Shodhan, head of the Gujarat-based indie studio Masala Games. “It’s a staggering thought, when you really ponder it. We have a multitude of intriguing stories to share. There’s an abundance of captivating material, both historically and in contemporary India, that deserves to be highlighted.”
Narinder Kapur, a senior analyst at Niko Partners, observes that Indian developers have achieved some local success, particularly in mobile gaming. Smartphones dominate the gaming landscape in India, with around 94 percent of Indian gamers primarily playing on mobile devices, according to Niko Partners’ 2024 report. “One of the most popular games in India is called Ludo King, essentially Ludo in an app format,” Kapur explains, pointing out that other successes include the battle royale shooter Underworld Gang Wars from Mayhem Studios in Bengaluru, and the newly launched Indus: Battle Royale by SuperGaming, which has carved a niche on the
Niko Partners also reports that there are now approximately 508 million gamers in India, who are estimated to have spent around $943 million in 2024. The venture capital firm Lumikaiprojects the figure to be even higher, at $3.8 billion. Nonetheless, India’s gaming sector still remains relatively small. China, with a similarly large population and mobile-oriented market, is expected to see gaming revenues of around $49.8 billion in 2024, according to Niko Partners.
Several factors have been suggested to explain why India’s gaming industry lags in terms of scale. Kapur highlights that it could be partly attributed to years of negative perceptions toward gaming within the country. “For a long time, video games were regarded as a frivolous activity, particularly during times when incomes were not as elevated,” he explains, noting that parents would question the logic of investing in expensive gaming computers over education. “Even after India’s software services sector thrived, the gaming industry did not flourish alongside it, as many individuals with the necessary skills opted to join the broader software services sector.”
Beyond that, there are two crucial aspects that have hampered the growth of the Indian gaming industry: education and funding, with the latter already receiving reports of how investors are neglecting
Moreover, the underdeveloped nature of India’s gaming industry means there are very few people in the country with adequate expertise to provide training. Chengaiah, who is currently 28, experienced this firsthand when he enrolled in a game design course after high school, only to drop out due to his dissatisfaction with the quality of instruction. “Unlike the West, the first generation of game developers are still engaged in the industry: we haven’t reached an age where we can retire and become educators,” he remarks.
There are also significant skill deficiencies. “We excel in art, programming, and quality assurance, but we fall short in design and narrative development. If you examine our educational system in India, it’s highly technical, yet lacks creativity.”
Even though India’s market is predominantly mobile-focused, Chengaiah believes that among the approximately 120 members of the Indian game dev founders WhatsApp community he established, around 50 are developing PC and console games. Outlier Games has been intermittently working on a third-person PC action-adventure title called Deliverance for about three years, often relying on friends volunteering their time.
“We don’t have a physical office,” Chengaiah states. “For registration purposes, we do have an office, but no one actually works there. Everything is done remotely, and no one is receiving salaries. Therefore, I sustain my team by holding a day job at another game company, and I undertake a lot of consulting and freelance work in game design and production.”
The hope is that if they secure a publisher, other team members can begin drawing salaries. However, PC and console publishers are exceedingly rare in India. The only one Chengaiah knows of is 1312 Interactive, which was recently established by a friend. “But they’re starting out modestly,” he notes. “They are seeking around 50,000 to 60,000 in funding projects, nothing larger than that.”
In contrast, Outlier Games was aiming for a $1 million USD budget for Deliverance, “which, by Western standards, is actually not a large sum for a third-person action-adventure game.” He estimates that a similar project would cost around $5 to $6 million USD if developed outside India. Nonetheless, considering current market conditions, the publishers he has approached are only willing to offer up to $300,000 USD – leading Chengaiah to make the difficult decision to pause Deliverance and start over with a smaller story-driven project.
Similar to Outlier, Shalin Shodhan’s Masala Games operates primarily as a remote-working company and largely relies on contract work. However, Shodhan had the fortunate advantage of acquiring practical experience in the United States. While he was pursuing his master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon University in 2003, a recruiter from EA noticed his work on terraforming and quickly signed him up.to collaborate with Will Wright on the innovative Spore. After spending several years at EA, Shodhan departed to make a mark at Pixar, working as a shading artist on animated films such as Toy Story 3 and Inside Out. However, when his friend welcomed twin boys in 2014, they made the significant choice to return and raise them in India.
“We definitely required familial support,” Shodhan remarks. “Thus, the choice was very substantial, but also very straightforward. And in hindsight, truly a beneficial decision, because it allowed me to pursue some of the more entrepreneurial ventures and explore some of the more daring ideas that have led us to where we are now, whereas if I had remained in the US, I would still be confined to working with other organizations.”
Now, after nearly two years of development, Masala Games’ first PC title is set to launch on April 3, 2025, accompanied by an exciting film. Detective Dotson features an aspiring Bollywood actor who reluctantly becomes a detective following the death of his father, and then embarks on solving a series of cases set in contemporary India.
“I don’t merely want to discuss ancient, epic, mystical, fantasy India; I genuinely want to highlight the India that I experience every day, because I believe it is more captivating than our history,” Shodhan states. Therefore, Detective Dotson presents a pixelated depiction of bustling, chaotic contemporary Indian life, featuring elements such as the omnipresence of election posters and the pervasive, casual littering—something Dotson can address by tossing the litter back at the perpetrator. “Littering is a significant issue here,” Shodhan explains. “This is a personal frustration of mine, and something I aimed to convey a message about.”
Chengaiah expresses enthusiasm about the vast potential for video games set in India. “We have roughly 3000 years of history to explore, so that’s a wealth of material, isn’t it?” On the flip side, he notes that the past few years have witnessed a handful of hasty releases of mobile games in India that have “left a very unpleasant taste in the mouths of Indian gamers.” He points to titles like the shooter FAU-G, as well as the recently launched Indus. “[Indus] was released while still in beta, which makes it a very rushed game.”
The highly-anticipated card battler Kurukshetra: Ascension, inspired by the renowned tale of the Mahābhārata, has also been a commercial letdown, he asserts. “Indians aren’t keen on card battlers. You can’t simply take Mahābhārata and then place it in a genre that no one in India is interested in.” Due to all of this, he believes that Indian gamers have grown cautious towards India-based games. “They’ll be thinking, ‘Oh, no, no, we aren’t trusting that. Create a quality game first, and then return to us. It doesn’t even need to be set in India, just make it a good game.'”
Nevertheless, a recent report by Lumikai revealed that 60 percent of Indian gamers desire