TechLahore

Word Target is an excellent (and addictive!) word game for the iPhone from Pepper.pk

Pakistani software companies are churning out some exciting gaming titles! I was very pleased to see Mindstorm Studios launch their cricket game for the PC. Undoubtedly, it’s been built with a lot of love and attention to detail and frankly, all of it shows. This is clearly one game designed by cricket enthusiasts for cricket enthusiasts.  The fact that this remarkable game was made in Pakistan by a small startup is true cause for celebration.

Mindstorm’s success with Cricket Revolution made me look around for other gaming startups based out of Pakistan. You may not know it, but there are more than a few! One of these recently caught my attention because it combines two hot areas: gaming, and mobile devices. The Lahore based company is called Pepper.pk and  is a spin-off from FiveRivers, an established software development company also from Lahore. What’s impressive about these guys is that they’ve been quite prolific in releasing productivity and gaming apps for a variety of mobile platforms, including the iPhone, Android and Blackberry.

In talking to the folks at Pepper, I discovered that they’ve been launching small but highly playable and entertaining games at a healthy clip; almost a new one every a week. And they’ve been having a reasonable amount of success too. Their Christmas themed game has been seeing between 2,000-3,000 downloads every single day since they launched it! They’re forecasting more than 100,000 users for their apps before the year ends. For a company that launched its first mobile app just a few weeks ago, that is incredibly impressive. Kudos all around!

In terms of revenue models, Pepper seems to be experimenting with a few different approaches. They have some free apps and then some very inexpensive paid games too. My personal favourites are Snap’n Puzzle and Word Target.

Pepper.pk's Snap'n Puzzle is available for Android, Blackberry and iPhone platforms. It's an addictive puzzle game with a personalized twist!

Snap’n Puzzle is a highly playable puzzle game available for the Blackberry, Android and iPhone platforms. The game starts off by asking you to take a picture with the camera on your mobile device and then converts it into a tile puzzle of varying complexity. Alternatively, you can use an already stored image from your photo folder too. The puzzles can be quite challenging, and the personalized image just adds a touch that makes this game entertaining and interesting.

I’m a sucker for word games, so it’s no surprise that I like Word Target. This is an incredibly addictive word game that is currently available for the iPhone only. The object of Word Target is to assemble a series of Scrabble-like word tiles into words. The longer the word, the higher the score. Once you’re done with five words from a specific set of tiles, you can hit the “ABC” button to have a new set of tiles dealt out to you. If you are unable to conjure up at least five unique words from a set of tiles in the alloted time, you’re done for! At the end of the game, Word Target also shows you all the different word combinations you could have made. So it’s entertaining and educational, fitting squarely in that edutainment genre that’s been all the rage with K-12 kids and their parents.

We’ll certainly keep an eye on Pepper. You can also take a look at their current catalog. From what I hear, this list is going to be growing pretty quickly. Good luck and all power to them!

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