Building the First High-End 3D Game in a Virtual Arab World: Planet Toulan

**Bertha Bot** · 11-04-2012, 21:29

For awhile, I’ve been wondering why no gaming studio in the Middle East that I knew of was building a high-end video game on the level of, say, Call of Duty. Call it a personal bias, but I always thought it was a bit off that most 13-year-old boys with a console are lusting after a game featuring American soldiers fighting global battles.

Then I met Beladcom, a young team of obsessed game developers and graphic designers- both men and women- in Amman who are working studiously to build a lush, high-end 3D Arabic title called Planet Toulan.

Toulan is an ancient Arabic name meaning “extremely magical,” explains co-founder Mohammed Hujeij. Inside the game, players navigate a detailed world built upon the myth of 1001 Nights (Alf Leila wa Leila), he explains, where the protagonist interacts with jinns and battles mystical species in a quest to control Nawa, the lifeforce of the planet. (To explain the story and introduce the myth, the team released online comic books, viewable on the Planet Toulan website).

In a quick demo, the land and cityscapes look incredibly detailed, with a lot of work put into rendering a set of Arabian ruins or the calligraphy on the archways of a city entrance. It has a soothing feel, with a day-night cycle that elapses over two hours; the game’s pace brings it a bit closer to World of Warcraft than something like Tomb Raider or Call of Duty.

I couldn’t test the mechanics of the gameplay, but I watched the founders demonstrate a battle with demons using items found throughout the game. They’re still heavily in development, they say, but it’s clear that the founders carefully obsessed over each palm tree and archway when rendering desert lands and a city by the sea.

Building 3D titles seems a natural step. Dubai-based Game Power 7 has been releasing 3D titles since 2010, but mostly localized Korean titles with a Japanimation feel. Beladcom is aiming to be the first to release an MMORPG with a fully native design and approach. “This is what differentiates us,” says Hujeij.

Read the full article on WAMDA.com.