FAUG opened with a bang on its launch, breaking records and creating a lot of excitement, only to leave users wanting better graphics and gameplay  

Announced on 4 September 2020, the much-awaited Made in India game FAUG finally graced the Android app store on Republic Day. As was the expectation, the app was soon downloaded millions of times. The app even broke the record for the highest number of pre-registrations in the first 24-hours of its launch, according to the game’s developer and publisher nCore games. 

However, not everything went as planned and pretty soon FAUG started receiving a storm of negative ratings on the app store. The one-star ratings soon brought the overall rating of the app down from five to three stars. To make matters even worse for the game’s developer, there was also chatter about the poor quality of the game’s graphics, dated gameplay and the inability of the publisher to provide a wholesome experience for users. 

FAUG was announced right around the time when Indian mobile gamers lost their access to the beloved PUBG game developed by Tencent. The ban on the game came along with the banning of over 150 apps by the Indian government citing security threats to the nation’s sovereignty and integrity. And even though avid players have found ways to access their beloved mobile game through different means like the use of VPNs, the ban on the popular game did not go down well with the vast number of its users. 

Now, looking at all the negative ratings that FAUG has been receiving, especially the one-star rating on the app store, nCore believes it has more to do with the annoyed PUBG fans than actual shortcomings in the game. “This is really quite unfortunate. We thought that being an Indian studio, we will receive support and encouragement from people. I can understand we are not five stars, but we are not one star either. I mean, we are somewhere in the middle right now,” said nCore Games founder Vishal Gondal during an interview with Gadgets 360.

However, looking at the hundreds of negative reviews, rating the app as being worth only one star, one does wonder if it is, in fact, the work of disgruntled fans of PUBG. and if one does go through the trouble of actually downloading the app and spending a few minutes playing the game, the picture does get a little clearer. 

Although FAUG never claimed to be an alternative to PUBG, the timing of the announcement of the game coupled with the teaser gave fans hope that it will be some sort of an alternative to the banned app. Even now Vishal Gondal maintains that the game was not influenced by PUBG and neither will it be in the future. “The idea was to have the soldier, who is called fauji. This is the most common word in India. So, the idea was to play on the soldier word. It just rhymed with PUBG. It was not to say that we are the same,” he says. 

However, this has not stopped people from having high expectations from the game, which unfortunately seemed to have been left unfulfilled. 

The version of the game available on the Android app store it seems is just a basic introduction to what users can expect in the future of the game and does little to inspire confidence that the future iterations of the game will be anywhere close to what gamers nowadays expect. The graphics seem to be okay at best, with the gameplay being somewhat of a trail where not much can be done apart from beating up bots.

If Gondal is to be believed, we can expect far more intensive gameplay with a lot of improvements in future updates. He said that users can expect team deathmatch and battle royale modes pretty soon and also that users can expect updates every month that would further improve the gameplay and graphics. He has also promised the addition of weapons and new themes to the game. 

Even if future updates do improve the games many times over, one cannot ignore the shabby version of FAUG that greeted users when it was launched on 26 January and one cannot help wonder what was the need to release a shabby version of a game Indian gamers had such high hopes for when it still had tons of improvements to be added.