INTRODUCTION:
Ludo Star was the first Ludo game in the market with 4 Player Mode, Team up Mode, and Private Table with easy invite options.
DEVELOPERS:
It all started with Govind and Afsar wanting to build great games. Games that people would love to grow old with. Games that were simple but deep enough to make players come back again and again.
Starting their journey from the first year of college at IIT Kharagpur, over the course of 7 years, before Gameberry Labs, they had worked together on building multiple web-based products like Helpbook, Lolcentre, Gawds Advocate, Migzing.com, Annote & Halfteaspoon that didn’t work for some reason or the other but provided unparalleled insights on what not to do.
THE IDEA
With the growing craze of online Ludo, they found the right opportunity to do what they always wanted to do – make games that people want to grow old with.
So, they quit their jobs and started the development of Ludo Star & Parchisi Star.
They wanted to bring these classic board games to mobile with a social experience that helped friends and family connect with a hunch that these gaming experiences would be fun, even if people were miles apart from each other.
TABLE of 2 GAMES
While doing the market research on existing Ludo games, the founders discovered that a similar board game named Parchis/Parchisi was also deeply rooted in the Spanish culture. People in Spain, Morocco, Colombia, and Mexico had a similar connect with Parchisi, as Indians had with Ludo.
While Ludo still had some competition and few games in the market were already doing well, Parchisi was an untapped potential market. So, the founders decided first to launch Parchisi and then work for Ludo Star. To leverage the development efforts optimally, they designed a structure in which both the games were running from the same codebase.
LUDO
BECOMES BAE
Within 3 months of launch, both the games started gaining traction organically. Keeping an eye on user feedback helped the games get high ratings, which resulted in organic downloads & also made the games popular outside India.
Ludo Star was the first Ludo game in the market with 4 Player Mode, Team up
Mode, and Private Table with easy invite options. In addition, the game also displayed online statuses of player’s friends so that it was easier to invite each other.
By the end of June 2017, Ludo Star reached 250K Daily Active Players. The game topped the Charts in Pakistan and stayed at the #1 Overall App for months. The popularity of the game was immense, and the Ludo category started getting recognized as Ludo STAR.
THE NEXT STEP
The demand and growth of the game was fuelling fast. Players were demanding new features. It was difficult for both of them to handle the growing needs. So, they decided to reach out to their network and look for people who could help build the game and the organization.
The team of 2 became 4, with Pradeep Gupta and Manish Kaushal joining the team. Both alumni of IIT Kharagpur and gaming enthusiasts.
