It's no surprise that a company that has nothing to do with games has decided to do its own branded release.

No. What's significant about Just-Eat's Belly & Brain for iPhone is that it's good.

Still why would an online takeaway service provider want to release even a good game?

We caught up with chief marketing officer Mat Braddy to find out.

Pocket Gamer: So what's the deal with releasing a mobile game?

Mat Braddy: Grown-up answer: If you look into the demographics of the home delivery takeaway market you can see around 30 percent of consumers are gamers.

It's really important to us as a growing brand to reach out and appeal to these guys and girls. We have previously advertised within Xbox and PS3 games, which worked really well, so we wanted to build on that.

Real answer: We are gamers and we love games so couldn't resist commissioning one of our own. The Belly and Brain characters are well loved and we wanted another outlet for them to develop.

What sort of internal management buy-in had to be obtained?

Ha - that question reminds me of working for big corporate beasts. Just-Eat is not that kind of establishment.

Although we are big, we still have a energetic start-up approach. If anything there was internal pressure on the marketing team to get on with making a game as the company is full of passionate gamers.

How did you go about finding a development team?

We saw some excellent agencies who specialise in creating games for brands. That method can work but it can also backfire and result in something bland - an advergame.

Lava Level are Dundee-based developers who used to work at Denki, DMA and Codemasters so have a real gamer heritage that we loved.

Why did you end up going for a trajectory type game?

In our TV ads, Belly is hungry but too stupid to feed himself and Brain solves this problem with your friendly neighbourhood takeaway website. We really wanted this dynamic to be at the heart of the gameplay and the trajectory genre seemed the most natural fit.

You've got a multiplayer mode and Facebook integration, so how important is viral promotion?

Worms. We loved Worms on PlayStation, especially the multiplayer where you passed the one controller around the room taking turns to thrash each other. I wasted months on that game as a student playing with my housemates. It struck us that iPhone games would be perfect for that experience so we've had a little crack at it.

Facebook integration is just a cute add-on to allow us to brag about high scores. The game only suggests you post scores if you get three stars.

Advergames don't have to have the same level of quality as paid games, so what was your view on how good Belly & Brain had to be?

As gamers we started this from the point of view of trying to make a good game. We really wanted to avoid what we termed Pringle Kong syndrome where brands shoe horn themselves into ill fitting clothes and end up looking like dad flirting with your new girlfriend.

The Pringle game was a very high quality flash game where you played a chap from the King Kong movie running through the jungle whilst timing jumps over rolling tins of crisps...

Now it was good work but why? I don't recall the eight wonder of the world fighting off dinosaurs armed with potato and wheat-based weaponry.

If you make a game like that, as a marketing person, you will spend months of time and thousands of pounds on something that people glance at once and forget about. We've all made games previously in our careers that suffered from this problem and so we've hopefully now learnt our lesson.

What are the metrics you're using to measure its success?

The real test will be if people are playing it in a few weeks time. We really didn't want to be a one night wonder.

It's only just been released but what sort of feedback have you been getting?

It's been brilliant so far. People seem to really appreciate the fact the game is free but contains over 100 levels. Most free games are limited trials whereas this is a full release with weeks worth of fun.

The game contains an in-app link to use Just-Eat online. How important is this?

We hope the game will spread virally through word of mouth to people who may not have seen the TV ads or heard of Just-Eat; so it is important to have a link to our core business to explain who we are and what we do.

What's next for Belly & Brain?

We are working on the next set of TV ads for the new year so hopefully these will inspire a new game idea from Lava Level.

Thanks to Mat for his time.

You can download Belly & Brain for your iPhone for free [iTunes link].