Team behind South Africa’s sensational game Rapulani Game participates at Africa Games Week in Cape Town
By CityLife Arts Writer
The gaming industry is fast growing globally and young techno savvy African inventors are not to be left behind from participating in this multi-billion dollar industry.
The largest gathering of games developers in Africa currently taking place as a hybrid live and virtual event from Cape Town this week (23-25 ) February, 2022. The event which attracts around 150 developers from around the world aims to increase exposure, opportunities, knowledge and investment to African Game developers.
Alkemaize the South African team behind the new online game Rapz!Game, represented by Yolanda Mogatusi at the gaming event, was announced as a winner at the African Games Co-production Market. The announcement took place on the 23rd November in Berlin Germany during the Games Week Berlin ProX Dev Booster and again during the recent African and Europe business forum held last week.
There were nine winners announced from entries around the world with Alkemaize being selected in the Mobile Games category. Rapz! is a game for young girls based on the characters of the animated book Rapulani!.
It is about a young girl, Rapulani, with a magical afro who must endure many great obstacles and a gauntlet of an adventure with her magical hair, just to get through the day. Space Salad Studios in partnership with Alkamaize developed Rapz! The Game with their team members Thabo Tsolo, Rethabile Koma, Neo Ramathinyane, Minentle Ndzala and Wandile Matsebula.
Space Salad Studios is a startup Indie Game Development Studio which was established in 2019 and is based in Johannesburg.
Rapulani! the animated book and Rapz!Game are the brainchild of Yolanda Keabetswe Mogatusi, a storyteller, entrepreneur and hair enthusiast with several years of experience in both film and television.
Of the 46 entries selected by the jury, 17 were invited to pitch their projects for selection on 10 November 2021. The Alkemaize team is currently participating at Africa Games Week in Cape Town, also attending a mentoring programme throughout the year, composed of several milestone events.
The selected studios will be participating in high-level, online mentoring days throughout the year. During the mentoring days, experienced experts and mentors will meet the studios to improve their concepts and prototypes.
The goals of the mentoring will be to provide support to the studios as they develop their codevelopment model, financing strategy, business model, relationships with potential co-producers in Europe in order to further finance and develop their games.
At the end of the programme, an online co-production market with other European game studios will take place, where studios will pitch to each other to try to find partnerships and co-producing partners.
The goal of the African Games Co-production Market is to foster collaboration between Indie Games Studios in Africa and Europe and with the support of a European co-producer, African developers can access complementary expertise and funds that will help them to develop and release successful African based Indie Games.