Launched in April last year and seed funded by Africa’s 88mph, Nigerian gaming startup Gamsole says it has partnered with a global gaming publisher based in Tokyo in a move to up its aim of telling the day-to-day African stories in a unique, fun-filled way.
The partnership will give it even a more playground than its early counterparts in Africa’s gaming scene who are grappling for Africa’s over 1 billion population and nearly 200 million internet users according to Internet World Stats.
According to Olaniran Abiola, the founder speaking to TechMoran, ” Our games have elements of well researched and refined elements of African art concepts that we use to develop rich, fun-filled and memorable experiences for our consumers.”
Just new on the gaming scene, Gamsole already has two games to show their work hard play hard ethic.
At the moment Road Blazer and Kazoo are being played while in final stages of development are Mosquito Crasher and Oyo Empire. Road Blazer takes a player through a busy city street with heavy traffic at high-speed while earning secret weapons and deploying them as they blaze the trail with their car. A player has to dodge missiles, avoid obstacles and traffic at breakneck speed. Kazoo on the other hand is a puzzle word games challenging players to create own dictionary in a fun-filled environment, form new meaningful words and get great achievements.
Gamsole comes into the field ripe with fierce competitors with several games under their roofs. Gamsole will face it off with Maliyo games, Kuluya games, Tough Jungle, Ma3 Racer and Kola Studios’ titles among others across the continent.
Competition aside, Gamsole is making progress publishing all its games on available platforms. According to the founder, Gamsole develops games for iOS, Android and Windows Phone handsets and the reception so far is great.
TechMoran caught up with the founder in his busy schedule and this is what he quickly shared with us.
News about the partnership will carried in detail this week here.
What is Gamsole?
Gamsole is a mobile gaming company focusing on creating fun games with African realities.
When was it launched?
Gamsole was lunched on April 2012.
Are you the founder?
Yes, you are right, I am (Olaniran Abiola) the founder.
What inspired you to find it?
After winning a mobile App development contest in my country where I developed a mobile game called “Corruption Monsters”-which featured Nigeria corrupt politicians, and seeing people’s reaction to this game, I realized the idea of creating mobile games with African realities will be great.
Examples of games?
Traffic Madness : A racing/action game with a difference, in that it depicts the African environment. You can race in Nairobi, Lagos, Freetown and other African cities.
It’s a free-to-play game in which players can buy weapons with the coins they earn while driving or pay 99c to get an equivalent of 1,000 virtual coins.
And unlike a typical racing game, Traffic Madness lets you bribe the African policemen when you are busted.
After all, human situations and behaviours are not the same everywhere. We create fun, with captivating graphic arts to represent the African environment.
The beta version (called Road blazer) of this game already had over 100,000 downloads on Windows Phone market place alone.
Platforms, web? Android? iOS etc?
We are working with the major smart phone platforms.
Any partnerships?
Currently working with a global game publisher from Tokyo.
How many users so far?
All our users are about 200,000. With some of our games increasing by 1,500 daily downloads.
What is your business model?
Our main business model is to providing fermium games.
Any funding yet?
We got a seed investment from 88mph in September 2012.
Challenges?
Basic infrastructures had been the main challenge which was why we went for a seed fund.
