Shereen Ali

Martenn, Trixy and Plex save the Buc­coo Reef is the name of a new game de­signed by Saleem Khan, a Trinida­di­an cur­rent­ly liv­ing in the far­away city of Al­maty in Kaza­khstan.

Re­leased last No­vem­ber and now avail­able on Ama­zon, the game is about aquat­ic aliens called Martenn, Trixy and their ro­bot Plex, who flee their aquat­ic home world af­ter an in­va­sion, and end up in the Milky Way, on plan­et Earth, crash land­ing in­to the Buc­coo Reef wa­ters off To­ba­go. The aliens make Buc­coo Reef their new home. In the game, the trio fights var­i­ous threats–bar­rels of ra­dioac­tive waste, and in­ter-di­men­sion­al mon­sters–in or­der to save the sea crea­tures. It is an ad­ven­ture-type fan­ta­sy game for ca­su­al gamers (teens and adults), which in­volves shoot­ing bad guys, some ed­u­ca­tion on en­dan­gered species, and even some singing.

Saleem Khan talked in an in­ter­view with the Guardian about him­self, and how he came to de­sign the game.

Now 43, Khan is a San Juan boy who went to Queen's Roy­al Col­lege, stud­ied Nat­ur­al Sci­ences at UWI, and lat­er worked in the bank­ing in­dus­try. Through Ni­herst, he stud­ied in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy man­age­ment, which he said, "opened my mind to new pos­si­bil­i­ties....I taught my­self Web site pro­gram­ming. Back in those days it was all straight html code lan­guage, not like to­day's soft­ware pack­ages. I dis­cov­ered I had a knack for build­ing and main­tain­ing com­put­ers, and writ­ing pro­grammes was quite en­joy­able."

But in­vent­ing com­put­er games was the fur­thest thing on his mind at that time. From 1999 to 2000, Saleem's pet project was the idea of a glob­al fo­rum called Re­al Peo­ple, Re­al News, which would en­able any­one in any coun­try to raise and dis­cuss is­sues, dis­cov­er and share so­lu­tions, and ex­er­cise free speech on an on­line fo­rum. Lack of sup­port killed this project–but not Khan's en­thu­si­asm or de­ter­mi­na­tion.

"Life takes you from one strength-build­ing sit­u­a­tion to the next," he said, ex­plain­ing: "In 2005, the most un­ex­pect­ed thing hap­pened. I met the girl who would be­come my wife, while do­ing re­search on­line in­to the ac­tu­al ap­peal that Re­al Peo­ple, Re­al News would have in un­like­ly places like Chi­na and for­mer So­vi­et na­tions."

To­day, Khan is mar­ried to Ye­le­na and is liv­ing in Kaza­khstan.

Kaza­khstan, in cen­tral Asia, is the world's largest land­locked coun­try, with an area of over a mil­lion square miles, and, un­til its in­de­pen­dence in 1991, was part of the Russ­ian em­pire. North­east Kaza­khstan was once the site of grim nu­clear ex­per­i­ments un­der Stal­in: the So­vi­et Union con­duct­ed 456 nu­clear tests at Semi­palatin­sk from 1949 un­til 1989, leav­ing last­ing dev­as­ta­tion on ecosys­tems and peo­ple that lasts in that area to to­day, ac­cord­ing to Wikipedia.

But the coun­try of Kaza­khstan as a whole is al­so fair­ly wealthy, thanks to its abun­dant min­er­al and fos­sil fu­el re­sources which in­clude oil, nat­ur­al gas, ura­ni­um and gold. This means the coun­try has gen­er­al­ly bet­ter stan­dards of ac­com­mo­da­tion, restau­rants and trans­port than else­where in Cen­tral Asia, with the cap­i­tal city, Al­maty, al­most rem­i­nis­cent of Eu­rope with its leafy av­enues, chic cafes, glossy shop­ping cen­tres and nightlife, ac­cord­ing to the Lone­ly Plan­et trav­el guide.

The cou­ple be­gan their new life to­geth­er in Al­maty, and have known each oth­er for ten years now. They have a two-year-old daugh­ter. It was Ye­le­na who first sug­gest­ed to him that he try de­vel­op­ing mo­bile games and apps.

So in 2011, Khan en­tered a Nokia de­vel­op­ers com­pe­ti­tion for the best game/app. He said:

"Af­ter a fast three months of work, I pub­lished my first mo­bile game on Nokia's store. It was a small mem­o­ry game that used steel­pan notes, played in pat­terns that the play­er had to re­peat, to progress. The game fea­tured an im­age of Store Bay that I took on my trip there the year be­fore. The game was called 'Oh! Oh! Ba­by!' and even though I did not win a ma­jor prize, I was award­ed an en­graved Nokia X7 for qual­i­fy­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing.

"It was a pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment to have a first game pub­lished and re­ceive recog­ni­tion af­ter on­ly such a short time in de­vel­op­ment. So work be­gan on my sec­ond game–Martenn, Trixy and Plex save the Buc­coo Reef."

He said de­vel­op­ing the game took two years, from de­sign to test­ing.

"I spent most of my day be­ing a dad­dy to my new ba­by girl, and at night I would work on game de­vel­op­ment. My wife Ye­le­na worked a reg­u­lar day job; she hap­pens to be a pro­gram­mer, too.

"The Unit­ed Na­tions and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions have stat­ed that many reefs in the Caribbean will not ex­ist in 20 years. I hope when my daugh­ter gets to 20 years of age, she will be able to en­joy my home is­lands and specif­i­cal­ly the Buc­coo Reef. So you can say that the game brings fo­cus to this is­sue as well, be­sides the prob­lems of pol­lu­tion and the loss of en­dan­gered species," he said.

Saleem said he is cur­rent­ly work­ing on a fan­ta­sy nov­el about a Trinida­di­an young man who vis­its fam­i­ly in Eng­land and is drawn in­to a mag­i­cal world, with fan­ta­sy char­ac­ters in­spired by Tolkein and T&T folk­lore. "It will be pub­lished on Ama­zon Kin­dle when com­plet­ed," he said.

?The game Martenn, Trixy and Plex save the Buc­coo Reef is avail­able on Ama­zon:

http://www.ama­zon.com/Martenn-Trixy-Plex-save-Buc­coo/dp/B00P5FQ2O8

Min­i­mum op­er­at­ing sys­tem: An­droid 2.2