Gameshastra, the Hyderabad-based company which developed Desi Adda, will make their debut on Sony’s PlayStation Store, with the game ‘Cart Kings’ making them the first Indian company to do so. This move boosts GameShastra’s role as one of Sony’s major partner in India.

The relationship encompasses innovation and delivery of new downloadable games by GameShastra to Sony consumers worldwide which include Desi Adda for PlayStation2 , PSP and Eklavya (under development) for PlayStation 3 platform.

The company is also expanding their studio in Hyderabad, in particularly their development team of designers, artists, animators, developers and QA specialists. It has also established a new game design studio in Hyderabad to accelerate this growth plan and cater to the growing demand of its services worldwide. This facility has the capacity to accommodate 1000+ associates – making it one of the largest Game Studios in South Asia.

With the launch it’s clear that Gameshastra and Sony are targetting Indian diaspora rather than resident Indians as Playstation Store is not accessible in India by default (there are work arounds).  The launch could also mean that Sony will open up their stores in India sooner or later considering the competition they’re facing from Microsoft despite slashing down price of PS3.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Sony starts bundling Gameshastra’s under-development game, Eklavya, along with PS3 when it launches. Sony is already bundling Desi Adda and Human Boy Warrior with PS2 in India.

After Fifa, NFL, NBA, Cricket, now Indian games are ready to mark their presence on the gaming arena with Desi Adda: Games of India. Sony  has developed this console game that includes indigenous sports like Pachisi, Goat & the tiger, Kite Fight, Kabaddi, Gilli Danda and the beat matching dance game. The game is developed by Hyderabad based GameShastra, for PS2.

First Looks

“First impression is the last impression”. This saying has always mattered and will matter in the future too. Desi Adda has lived up to this saying. After checking out the Hanuman earlier which disappointed us, Desi Adda by the looks of it impresses us here. Hope it lives up to the impression it has created here.

The game surprisingly has a s ’story line’. You play the part of Avinash, son of an NRI businessman, who comes to visit his ancestral village (Dil Bole Hadippa in a rural way ). The guy has spent his time abroad, and this being his his first visit to an Indian village, it fascinates him. The story unfolds as he roams around the village and plays the different village games. We hope they won’t have cheesy hindi dialogues like in the Hanuman game which was released earlier.

Priced at Rs499 for PS2 and Rs999 for the PSP (yes there’s a PSP version!), the game is playable in 3 Indian languages : Hindi, Punjabi and in Tamil and this game is the first game completely developed by Indian Development Studio for the PSP.

Developed on a low budget, what we think here is that the game should get a fair trial & has to be seen as a advancement in the Indian gaming industry (trying to be a nationalist here ).

We are curious to see how they implemented games like kabaddi,gilli danda on a console and how the game mechanics are going to be. Watch out this space for more updates.

PS: Again, we’re hoping,  praying, pleading that it’s not like Hanuman. If it is, we’re not even bothering to play it fully like we did last time!