Challenge Your Friends To A Duel On GTalk – Tankaar.com : A Review

As a viewer of the epic TV series Mahabharat, you would have heard the word ‘Tankaar‘ emanating from Arjun’s mouth quite a number of times. This word refers to the sound a bow makes when it is plucked and released, which forms the basis of the artillery game on messenger by the same name which you can play online with your friends.

About the game: Tankaar can be regarded as a virtual duel which you can play with your online friends on your gtalk list apart from chatting. This homegrown game with a strong mythological backing has been inspired from a number of other artillery games like Pocket Tanks, Worms, Scorched Earth to name a few and the game play is somewhat similar.  The game is a 4 mb file that you download on to your computer and sign in using any xmpp account, the most popular being gtalk. If any of your friends are also online via tankaar, you can challenge them to a duel. But if they aren’t, don’t fret. You can always play with the Tankaar bot, who incidentally has mastered the game so much that he can never miss a target. In the latest version of Tankaar, you can choose from as many as 50 different astras which find their roots in literature. The player has to make a choice of his astra, choose the angle and power and launch his astra with a ‘tankaar’.

About the founders: The seed of this idea materialized in the minds of two IITians while they were studying in IIT Roorkee. Being fascinated by the potential of real time communication through the internet, they decided to create a game that could be played while chatting with your friends. The technology that powers tankaar is XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol), which also is responsible for Chesspark, a chess game that you can play with your gtalk friends. Working tireless from April, 2009, they brought out the first version of Tankaar in January 2010.

Game Play: Personally, I have played Pocket tanks a lot and initially this game also seemed like one of those spin offs. But when I started playing it, I discovered that the astras are quite different from each other and it is not just aim and shoot. You can induce damage to the opponent in a variety of ways by interacting with the environment. It is fun to play with your friends but it is quite frustrating to play with the Tankaar bot as he is a perfectionist! The developers addressed this issue in the latest release (August, 2010) by introducing 5 different levels for the bot.

Funding Status: The founders have pumped in their own money in this venture and have written the code themselves. The game has place for advertisers to advertise. An email correspondence with the founder revealed that they are looking at external funding for the marketing and promotion of the game. Right now though, they are concentrating on increasing the value of the game by garnering in loyal supporters. The game has been downloaded by over 1000 users and approximately 100 people play the game every day. 221 People like the Facebook page while it has 13 followers on Twitter.

Final Thoughts: Though this may not be an out of the box idea for a game, making a game based on the Indian mythology is a good idea. Artillery games have never gone out of fashion and so, Tankaar can bank on this for support. On the downside, people still prefer to play the conventional pocket tanks and it would be difficult for Tankaar to convince others to play the game. Given the Indian appeal of the game, it may not be able to create an international niche, though we have examples like Japanese anime finding itself a part of daily life of millions of people. Also, the game requires internet connection and cannot be played offline, even with the tankaar bot. There are plans to expand and introduce new and advanced features in the game. It is still at quite a nascent stage and with good marketing and promotion may be able to gain a lot more people.