On 16 January, Pune welcomed the second installment of Game Hack.

It's Reliance Games's pan-India game development and pitch competition that's designed to encourage the nation's indie developers to showcase their games, while gaining exposure, funds, publishing contracts, and benefiting from expert advice.

The format of Game Hack allows each participant four minutes to pitch on stage via a live telecast, with the top five games ultimately decided by crowd polling.

A lively event, Game Hack Pune saw more than 16 new games pitched, with over 50 indie developers and 60 students from the surrounding area in attendance.

On hand to judge and provide feedback to the entrants were: Anuj Tandon, co-founder of Rolocule Games; monetisation expert and VP of Reliance Games Sandeep Shetty; senior producer Matt Powers; and game design guru Patrice Crespy.

The winning studio, GameAnax, walked away with a cheque for 10,000 Rupees and will now face the winners of the other regional Game Hack rounds at the final taking place as The Very Big Pitch event during Pocket Gamer Connects Bangalore.

Next stage

"It was a pleasure attending the Game Hack event in Pune," said a jubilant Kalpesh Purohit, head of mobile gaming at GameAnax.

"We had a chance to demonstrate our products in front of such a jury – thank you very much for providing this opportunity to us."

Launched in Bangalore on 19 December 2014 before moving to Pune, the Game Hack series will subsequently take place in Chennai (31 January), Hyderabad (7 February), Delhi (21 Feb), and then Mumbai (28 Feb), before the grand final at PG Connects Bangalore in April.

By the time it concludes, Game Hack will have travelled across India having involved more than 1,500 indie developers across 200 studios, and 3,000 students from over 70 colleges.

Prospective participants can still submit their entries until 20 March at the Game Hack official site, where they'll find full competition rules, FAQs, and plenty more.