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Learn About ZooCube's Creator

by Jonathan Metts - July 5, 2002, 9:10 pm EDT
Source: Games Press

Here's a quick biography of Nalin Sharma, who conceived ZooCube.

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Acclaim UK sent out this press release with a lot of info on Nalin Sharma, president of Puzzlekings and creator of ZooCube. Thanks to Games Press for snagging it. PGC will have more on ZooCube and Mr. Sharma soon.

UK Developer Winning Industry Awards With First Title

The British designer of a new videogame is on the verge of international recognition after quitting his lucrative job in the city to pursue a career in the interactive entertainment industry. Nalin Sharma is the inventor of ZooCube, an action-based puzzle game for the Nintendo GameCube and Game Boy Advance, recently released in the US to critical acclaim and due in the UK on August 2nd 2002.

Although only in his mid-30's, Nalin Sharma's involvement in the computer games industry dates back twenty years. One of the 1980s' generation of self-taught programmers, he wrote his first commercial video game at the age of 16. Other games followed, most notably the chart topping Super Sprint for the Atari ST in 1987, which he wrote with a team of friends from Birmingham University, whilst studying for a degree in Software Engineering.

After completing his degree in 1988 Nalin had to make a difficult decision - to stay in the embryonic, unpredictable games industry or accept one of many offers of 'legitimate' work in mainstream IT.

He began a career as a management consultant working for Price Waterhouse and PA Consulting where he latterly advised blue-chip organisations including Egg, Capital Interactive and Racal on Internet architecture and strategy.

While working in the City, Nalin kept an eye on the videogames market and began to explore new designs for games, speculating that someday he could return to the industry to see his ideas made (virtual) reality. One idea stood out and after three years of research, development and prototyping evolved into a fully playable game for the PC called Cubic Juggler. After winning a national competition sponsored by Edge Magazine in the year 2000, Cubic Juggler was presented at international showcase for the product during Milia 2001, an interactive content exhibition held in Cannes each spring. Following this successful showcase, Nalin set up his company PuzzleKings to develop his ideas commercially and soon secured a global publishing deal with Acclaim Entertainment.

After further design refinement, the game is now known as ZooCube and has already won industry plaudits including E3's "Best Puzzle Game" for Game Boy Advance from top web portal ign.com and Gamespy.com said "ZooCube is the puzzle game perfected in almost every way".

Following the successful global roll-out of ZooCube, PuzzleKings will continue to specialise in producing innovative, high-adrenalin puzzle games for the mass market that are equally at home on portable and next generation gaming platforms.

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