Arabic Games is an initiative to push the gamedev scene in the MENA region, by doing joint events like a conference and shedding light on local games and communities. Despite its focus on the Middle East, it does highlight a lot of the talents from North Africa and features developers and speakers from the region.

A link the conference can be viewed below, however some of the highlights include Mark Yassine Ancheta current CEO and co founder at Altplay – game company focused on creating hyper casual games speaking about his current focus.
A veteran of the Moroccan games industry since 2009, where he started off as a level designer at Ubisoft which at the time had sought to establish itself in the region.

He was also one of the co-founders of the Moroccan Game Developer community together with Osama Hussein where they organised collaborative events with other communities around North Africa.

Upon his departure from Ibisoft in 2015, he started Altplay which has largely been in stealth mode working on small but relatively successful titles.

Speaking at the Arabic Game Conference, Yassine highlights the value of incremental successes.

“Hyper casual was just starting out and at the time we witnessed a lot of small games experiencing success on mobile which was a great thing for. Because we saw the value of taking a similar path to create small games and with those small wins reinvesting the profits into making bigger games in the future.”

On the question of what advice he would offer to his younger self, he had this to say,

“Start as an entrepreneur on day one. Really helpful to get an understanding of the production pipeline. However, in order for the games industry to thrive there needs to exist a lot of small games companies,” he said.

Citing Turkey as an example, Yassine touched on the growth of the industry which has been largely fuelled by university graduates jumping from the end of their studies into the grind of starting and running their own businesses together with previous classmates. It’s led to some phenomenal exits after a handful of exits after a few years and he believes we could see something similar.

Presently Altplay continues to embrace its strategy until it feels the need to announce something publicly.

New titles unveiled at Arabic Games Conference 2021

AJG Games studio has unveiled plans to follow up their prototype with a full fledged sequel. The first person survival horror game takes a lot of inspiration from illustrious counter parts such as Resident Evil and is set in a Moroccan Castle. Part Two is available to download and play now on Itch.io.

Implements of Fear developed by Egyptian Psycho Ravens is a first-person psychological horror game. The game is set in a realistic house from 1910, where certain unexpected events are continuously occurring. The player will need to solve puzzles that are extremely unconventional in nature and make difficult choices based on how much they are willing to risk. –

WshWsha urges the player to break free from the system by taking it on in a series of frantic, fast-paced, action-packed platforming challenges. Developed by Egyptian Ahmed Essam who works under the pseudonym Essssam. The game is due for release in 2022 on Steam and Itch.io.

CG Eagle Team released their game earlier this year and were looking to get more eyes on it. Titled Inheritors 2078, the game combines real-time strategy with Third-person shooter elements, The game takes place in the near future where AI helped in reaching super-advanced technologies humans used in almost every aspect of life including advanced weaponry, space travel, and colonization of nearby planets.