KARACHI: The latest addition to the line of Pakistan's politically-tinged smartphone games is "CM Maestro", launched on Sunday and centered on Sindh's new Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah.

Developed by Muhammad Sijjeel, CM Maestro takes you through a visualisation of Murad's daily activities, where he must beat bureaucratic hurdles to reach the end goal of increasing your points.

Hurdles and goals

'Terrorism', 'rigging', 'nepotism', 'floods' and 'bribe' are some obstacles he must dodge .

The gameplay will be familiar to those who played "Flappy Bird" in its heyday, though the animation feels clunky in comparison. Additionally, the graphics are poor and the game is laggy in general.

CM Maestro has a basic point-scoring system: you play as the CM as he flies in the foreground of blue skies and a high rise skyline and rack up points for each hurdle he passes through.

Some positives

One quality of the game that sets it apart from its predecessors is the unique soundtrack: a ramped up version of "Dila Teer Bija" with a catchy beat that takes it cues from traditional Sindhi music.

At 24MB the game is relatively small in size. At the time of this review, it has 50 downloads, 46 five-star reviews and multiple positive comments saying they "love the game".

Too many ads

CM Maestro presents ads after every second or third failed try. This gets frustrating for those with poor gaming reflexes, but considering the game is free, it's not a bad way to kill time.

Other app offerings by Sijjeel include "Bhutto Quotes" and "Legend Puzzles" (puzzles which depict pictures of famous personalities from PPP). It is then not difficult to conclude that the developer is a huge PPP fan.

All three applications are available from his Play Store page.

We catch up with CM Maestro's developer Muhammad Sijjeel to ask him a few questions about the game.

What inspired you to make the game?

Chief Minister Sindh and Pakistan Peoples Party are my inspiration. The way CM Sindh is taking care of Sindh's issues and he himself is visiting places and solving issues of people, that made me think to develop a game on him which shows the issues he is tackling in real life. So I chose the same theme for my game. As you can observe, if the player bangs with any hurdle, [they are] dead. So that is the message to our CM, to eliminate these issues from our society.

What made you choose the 'Flappy Bird' format?

The Flappy Bird-style theme was best suited for our game. It’s addictive and people love such games, It’s a 2D game, so side scrolling games are best to play in 2D mode.

How was the song selected?

One of our team members, Alamdar Khan, who is a singer/writer and actor based in Islamabad [selected the song]. It was his debut song for Pakistan People’s Party. Recently he played the lead character in "Dance Kahani" and also sang a song "Hum Aik Hein", which launched on August 14.

What were the main challenges you faced while making the game?

The main challenge was to design a theme of the game and graphics. Muhammad Asad Iqbal is our lead designer for the game and he really did well to convey our message which we wanted to circulate through our Game.

How long did the game take to create from start to finish?

It took us almost a month from requirements analysis to publishing the game.

How have people reacted to the game so far?

People are very excited and playing our game in groups. I am sharing a picture with you as well.

The interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.

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