Hugo Obi, the founder of Maliyo Games launched in April this year and is aiming squarely at what he calls the “casual games” market:”There are four core local elements: characters, narrative, sound and environment.” There are seven games available on the Maliya.com site: Adanma, Class Fight, Mosquito Squasher, Football Goalie, Okada Ride, Aboki and Kidnapped. Okada Ride is based on the motorcycle taxis that swarm dangerously like angry wasps around Lagos: the character in the game is trying to get a job and has to dodge potholes and traffic. Mosquito Squasher is as simple as the name implies: you take revenge online on Nigeria’s many mosquitos.

Play Games Here: >> http://maliyo.com



The games are free to play online on its web site and are not downloadable. Again the numbers of people playing is in the tens because the games have only been out for two weeks and there’s not yet been a concerted marketing push.

The next stage is to build a mobile pay-for version which it will co-brand and market with the Nokia Ovi store. It is also looking for similar co-branding opportunities with the Samsung and MTN stores.

As Obi told us:”We’ve built seven games in seven weeks so we’ve shown we can do it. This is a big, big opportunity. You’re looking at the 44 million in Nigeria who access the Internet via mobile so it will be an insanely huge opportunity.”

As seen on Balacing Act Africa http://www.balancingact-africa.com/news/en/issue-no-609/top-story/online-games-sector/en