Mumbai, May 26 -- When a boy is sacrificed by a group of robed men, he rises from the ashes as a demonic form, vowing vengeance and looking like an Indianised version of Hellboy. The trailer for Asura, a videogame released in 2017, looks like a scene from an animated Bollywood mythological drama, complete with rich visuals and a Hindi narrative. Created by Ogre Head Studio, a fivemember team of independent gamers based in Hyderabad, Asura has won nine awards so far, including Nasscom Game of the Year, 2017. Elsewhere in the field of Indian indie gaming, drought-stricken villages must be linked with their river, crumbling cities revived and forgotten tales decoded in museums inspired by poetry. The companies creating these games include Ogre Head, Holy Cow Productions in Bengaluru, a two-person team in Chala, Gujarat, that makes up Studio Oleomingus, and Nodding Heads Games in Pune, all trying to put a slice of India out on global platforms like Steam and GOG.com. "When we think of Indian games, we think of merchandising games based on films like Dhoom and Baahubali, where the script is not original and there is barely any plot progression, so indie games like Asura are a breath of fresh air," says Abdullah Faiz, 23, an avid gamer based in Mumbai. It's mainly the really avid gamers that will pay for these indie games, but in absolute numbers, it's still a large market. Online gaming revenues (typically, sums paid to download a game or for in-game purchases) have nearly doubled in India over the past four years, reaching Rs43.8 billion in 2018, according to a KPMG report released in March....