Words You’ll Hear Her Say A Lot

“Hold on…something’s off.”

You’d Want to Stay Away From Her When

She hasn’t had her morning chai. She gets honest, fast, and her replies turn sharper than people expect.

Her Mega Ambition As She Calls It

To build one mechanic so tight and original that other devs try to reverse-engineer it just to figure out how she did it.

Challenges faced by Simran

Relocation done differently

After graduation, Simran applied to a Bengaluru studio she had first encountered on Discord. They had seen her small mechanic tests over the past few months, so when she sent her portfolio, the review focused on the work itself.

The hiring manager simply said, “Your work is pretty good. Let’s have a chat sometime next week?.” Eventually, when they offered her a job, the bigger question was the move. Simran had never lived outside Delhi, and her family needed reassurance. The studio didn’t overpromise, but they did small, practical things that mattered. They paired her with a team member who answered questions about neighbourhoods and also connecting her with a broker they trusted. The studio didn’t go out of its way but she appreciated that the studio understood that relocation lands differently for young women.

By the time she arrived in Bengaluru, she felt less like she was stepping into the unknown, and more like she was entering a workplace that had already made room for her.

Screened out early

In her final semester, Simran attended a “tech careers day” where most tables belonged to IT companies. A mid-sized game studio had a small desk in one corner, so she queued with her laptop, hoping they would look at her work.

The recruiter asked her about the coding club she belonged to, whether she had participated in hackathons, and if she had worked on group builds. Simran hadn’t. Her projects were made alone, late at night, in whatever time she could find.

The other recruiter on the table watched a few seconds of her prototype and asked how she would “fit into a fast-paced tech culture.” It wasn’t unfriendly. But it was certainly a signal that they expected a certain kind of background they dint see her fitting in.

When the shortlist was announced, most names belonged to students already known in campus coding circles or connected through seniors in the industry. Skill mattered, but only after familiarity did.

Narrow openings

Simran joined a public Discord server for Indian game developers after a senior in college mentioned it. Most days she only read the threads, trying to understand how people talked about builds and blockers. One evening, she noticed a studio founder she recognised from a conference video answering questions in the design channel.

When Simran finally posted a small mechanic test, she expected it to disappear under more confident work. Instead, the founder replied with a simple question: “What were you trying to make the player feel here?”

They exchanged a few messages over the next month, never more than a handful of lines at a time. Simran sent small updates; the founder offered prompts that helped her see what she hadn’t been taught to articulate. When internship season arrived, Simran mentioned she was applying to studios. The founder said, “Share your portfolio link, I can pass it to a team that looks for juniors.”

Uneven ground of college

On the first day of her engineering programme, Simran felt both excited and nervous. She had worked hard to get there, and the idea of studying computer science felt huge. But as the orientation went on, she realised how few women were in the room. When the coding club and game dev cell introduced themselves, almost every senior on stage was a man.

In the first few weeks, she noticed how easily some classmates settled into the course. They already knew one another from school competitions or coaching centres. They compared past projects and jumped into campus tech groups without hesitation. Simran wasn’t intentionally excluded but there may not have been enough efforts to make her feel included.

She kept up, but she could see clearly that the engineering college environment hadn’t been built with students like her in mind.

Who gets to play

Simran started experimenting with small mechanic tests in college, usually late in the evening when her family had settled into their routines. She worked until someone needed her attention, or the laptop, or the space. If relatives walked in, she switched to a notes app out of habit more than fear.

Her brother could spend hours gaming without any comments. When Simran stayed up working on her prototype, her mother reminded her not to lose track of exams. No one questioned her interest outright, but the message was clear enough: his hobby was harmless; her passion and interest needed justification.

She learned to build in brief, almost hidden stretches of time, unsure if what she was doing counted as real work.