Ancient Gobustan in mobile game
By Nigar Orujova
The first Azerbaijani mobile game with national elements has been released grabbing public attention.
"Gobustan" game was developed by Azerbaijani "Appsheron Company" with support from the Culture and Tourism Ministry.
Appsheron is a young creative team of programmers united by the idea to develop and promote an art of creative software for mobile devices in Azerbaijan.
Developers of the game told AzerNews, the strategic aim of the game was to attract the attention of foreign youth in one of the Azerbaijani ancient sites - Gobustan.
"We have decided to talk to young people in their own language," they said.
Gobustan is geographical area in eastern Azerbaijan surrounded by the Greater Caucasus Range and the Caspian Sea. There are remains of inhabited caves, settlements, and burials, all reflecting intensive human use by the inhabitants of the area from the Upper Paleolithic to the Middle Ages.
This cultural site covers three areas of rocky boulders rising out of the semi-desert of central Azerbaijan, with an outstanding collection of more than 6,000 rock engravings bearing testimony to 40,000 years of rock art.
Since 2007, Gobustan Rock Art Cultural Landscape has been included into a UNESCO World Heritage List.
The game offers to live a day of ancient Gobustan people' life -- hunting and fishing, and have fun using Gavaldash, an ancient musical instrument, which was played by the ancient Gobustan people during festivities and dances-all these elements are reflected in the rock carvings.
The main aim of the game player is to earn the greatest possible score, and enjoy nice characters and pleasant music. The plot is not complicated yet, but the developers have plans to improve the game, if having enough financing.
"We will improve the game if find the funding, it was the first experience and we did our minimum program. Further, we plan to use all the instruments to make the game even better," developers said.
The game is free and already available in Facebook social network and Google Play, where it has over 5,000 installs to date. In the near future, it will also be placed in AppStore.
The company plans to develop this new sphere for Azerbaijan in the future. However, they are not optimistic about the investments.
"I think the industry will grow for 3-5 years only on the expense of grants and enthusiasm of those startups inspired by the success of "Angry birds", one of the developers said.
"Speaking about the product for the world market, it is all based on the quality of the game. If we could create a qualitative product, we will build an effective marketing, and people will gather themselves up," he added.
The market of the video game industry is still innovative in Azerbaijan, both for PC and smartphones; however, more and more youngsters are getting interested in the sphere, which is pleasant tendency for the country.