Exclusive: Kamla Developer MadMantra on Regional Pricing, Steam Deck Support, and the Challenges of Indie Game Development
It turns out that being aware of the community discourse goes a long way in making a game.
Kamla is a survival-horror game developed by MadMantra Games. It first caught my eye in October of last year with an interesting trailer on Twitter (no, Elon, I’m not calling it X). Set in 1980s India it’s inspired by the Hindi horror movies of that era and deals with exorcism. A combination that’s as novel as it gets in video games.
With the release date for Kamla set for May 6, 2024, I reached out to Shubham Rajanwar, Game Developer and Designer at MadMantra Games to know more. He also touches upon regional pricing, Steam Deck support, the current Steam wishlist ‘meta’ and a whole lot more. Some responses have been edited slightly for clarity and length.
For the uninitiated, could you give us a brief background of your game development journey?
After completing my studies, I began working in India as a game developer for various mobile gaming companies. I did that for three years before deciding to explore opportunities abroad.
About a year ago, I relocated to Germany and commenced work here. Since the position was remote and offered flexible working hours, I found I had ample time to pursue my passion for gaming. I finally took a step towards my long-term goal of establishing an indie game studio, feeling comfortable in my ability to lead a team. In August 2023, I reached out to my old friend Prashant M to see if he would be interested in joining me for the first project, to assist with design. Together, we recruited two other guys to join the team and we started MadMantra.What's Kamla about and what can players expect at launch?
Kamla is our debut project, which was initially intended to be a small mobile game. However, feature creep took hold, and we ended up scaling it up to its current scope.
In Kamla, players assume the role of a Tantrik who is summoned to aid the Prabhakar family when a newlywed bride becomes possessed by an evil entity. The player's objective is to exorcise Kamla by locating various objects needed for a ritual.
These items are hidden throughout the haveli, some locked behind puzzles and obstacles. Players must collect all these ritual components and bring them to the havan without being caught by Kamla, who roams the house. The game is set in a dark and ominous atmosphere, reminiscent of 1980s Indian Haveli, providing a constant sense of threat.What are the inspirations for Kamla and how long has it been in development?
When we started MadMantra and began researching our first project, we initially opted for a small-scale mobile game, considering it was our first endeavour as a group. With a shared love for horror games, particularly my own, we explored the realm of horror mobile games like 7 Days to Die, Granny, and others, which revolve around completing tasks and surviving for a set duration.
Inspired by these, we started conceptualising our own game within a modest scope. However, after a few months of development, because of external interest and the enthusiasm of our team, we made the decision to expand the game's scale. It evolved into a PC game, with enhancements across the board. Kamla has now been in development for eight months.The description for Kamla on Steam states the game deals with exorcism. How did you go about researching the topic and what was the reason for this choice of theme? With exorcism being an esoteric topic how did you go about bringing it to life in-game for Kamla?
As a kid, I watched old Indian horror movies from Ramsay brothers like Bandh Darwaza and Purana Mandir to name a few. I felt like I wanted to go with that kind of a vibe and environment since we haven’t seen that before in games.
We wanted to be a bit careful about using religion as a topic in a true sense when it came to the actual gameplay actions. So we went with our own direction with few basics taken from the Hindu Tantrik culture.Moreover, Kamla's art direction seems to have a rustic and at times gritty look to it. What was the thought process and inspiration behind it?
A lot of old indian horror movies and especially the ones with a haveli in it. Since we knew that we wanted our environment to feel like an old haveli we went on this research phase to collect data on haveli's aesthetic and we came up with a plan to execute in our way. In a nutshell: it was a lot of googling to see how things looked in big havelis back then.From a design perspective we've seen some features such as a Kalash and a Hanuman Chalisa to keep the evil spirit at bay. While these add novelty, are there any mechanics or features geared towards gameplay depth?
There are six items to be collected which act as recipe items for the final ritual, Kalash and Chalisa being few of those. The items themselves don’t act as mechanics. However we do have them behind puzzles and obstacles where other mechanics come in and few other items that do not go in the recipe but do affect the gameplay.What challenges have you faced developing a game of this kind?
As a small team we only had one person working on the 3D artwork of the game and us going with the Indian haveli theme meant everything has to be created from scratch and no asset flipping was possible even for common items like a teacup or a stool.
However, our artist Prem is amazing at his job. He was able to make more than 250 items for the game all on his own, which however did take a long time. Because this was our first project, it took time to learn how a team should work and to get a production pipeline working for everyone since we all were working from homes.
Being nobodies in the industry as of now, it was almost impossible for us to get any real marketing without dedicated efforts in that direction, hopefully in the future it gets easier as we develop more games. We remade many things, the haveli was redesigned and remodeled three times, same with some game mechanics. Finding the fun took some time since we were new to something of this scale.A topic that comes up often with game developers and publishers on Steam is how the current meta to bring about sales success is that it's dictated by wish lists. As an indie developer how do you solve for this?
Honestly this has been a very difficult task. we did not have any dedicated budget towards marketing. We planned few action items that we could do and started doing them for example: we made a Steam page before we started developing the game by setting up scenes in the engine according to our vision and start getting wishlists early.
We started making small reels for Instagram and lots of Reddit posts in relevant Indian subreddits which also worked quite well every time we did it.
Teasers and trailers, these always helped since this could help us get mentioned in places like IGN, Gamesgossip, LazyAssassin and other game journalists. This would also bring few wishlists. And finally, applying to different indie game events and showcases.Indian audiences usually expect a lower price tag on Steam. I'm curious to know, as a developer and a gamer, what are your thoughts on regional pricing? And will Kamla feature regional pricing in-line with Steam guidelines or do you plan on having your own pricing strategy?
Regional pricing is a must. The average Indian wage makes it unfair otherwise. I feel like this can also help with piracy at some level since if the price easily falls in the players budget they might just get it on Steam and avoid downloading a pirated copy.
Kamla will follow standard steam regional pricing policy with few manual edits for few countries. The game will be priced at Rs. 600 at launch with a launch discount of 20 percent, making it Rs. 480 at launch.Finally, are there plans to bring Kamla to other platforms? What about Steam Deck verification?
We definitely want to bring Kamla to Android and iOS later down the line with a lite and optimised version since it can be a free-to-play on those platforms, where a lot more people will be able to enjoy the game since MadMantra is long-term vision is to build a community.
Based on the feedback we get we might try to port it to other consoles. Working towards Steam Deck verification, we might not have it at launch but soon after.It’s admirable to see budding developers in India build for PC first, what with the current market dominated by mobile-first (and in a lot of cases, mobile-only) game developers. It’s safe to say that MadMantra will be targeting international audiences primarily but it’s heartening that the team is aware of hindrances towards PC gaming adoption and are trying to fix it in their own way with regional pricing.