General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Gone Game

The Gone Game is an Indian Hindi-language thriller web series produced by Bodhitree Multimedia for the streaming platform Voot Select, released on 20 August 2020. It is a four-episode murder mystery about the Gujral family, whose son Sahil is declared dead of COVID-19 during India's coronavirus lockdown, and it was itself shot entirely at the actors' homes during that lockdown, with no director or crew physically present.¹^•² It was touted as India's first web series about a pandemic.³

Key fact	Detail
Format	Four-episode thriller, each episode approximately 28 minutes, streaming on Voot Select¹^•⁴
Release	20 August 2020 (season 1); season 2 streamed from 7 July 2022⁵^•⁶
Director and writers	Directed by Nikhil Nagesh Bhat; written by Mautik Tolia, Nikhil Nagesh Bhat, Ayesha Syed, and Radhika Anand⁷
Principal cast	Sanjay Kapoor, Arjun Mathur, Shriya Pilgaonkar, Shweta Tripathi Sharma, Rukhsar Rehman, Lubna Salim, Indraneil Sengupta, Dibyendu Bhattacharya⁸
Production method	Shot entirely at the actors' homes during lockdown, mostly on iPhone cameras using the FiLMiC Pro app, directed virtually over video calls²
Reception	IMDb rating 7.8/10 from about 15,000 user ratings; 1 win and 14 award nominations⁹^•¹⁰
Season 2	Five episodes of 26 minutes each (2022), later streaming on JioHotstar⁶

Spoilers

Premise

The story begins in March 2020, in the first weeks of the pandemic. Sahil Gujral (Arjun Mathur) returns from Bangkok with symptoms of COVID-19 and quarantines himself in his room; his wife Suhani (Shriya Pilgaonkar), a social media influencer, moves to the guest room, while the rest of the family is stranded in separate locations.¹¹ The family observes the Janata Curfew announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi from their respective phone screens, divided over the balcony displays of appreciation for frontline workers.¹¹

Sahil's test comes back positive and, a day after hospital admission, he is declared dead and his body is cremated by the authorities, so the family cannot perform the rites themselves.¹¹^•¹² The mystery turns when his sister Amara (Shweta Tripathi Sharma) receives a call from Sahil's phone, and the hospital informs her that Sahil was never admitted there; the test report and the picture of the cremation are revealed to be fake.¹¹^•¹² The family, led by the patriarch Rajeev Gujral (Sanjay Kapoor), a businessman in debt to the threatening Advocate Subhash Chaudhary (Dibyendu Bhattacharya), tries to establish whether Sahil was kidnapped, murdered, or is alive.⁴^•¹²

Season 2

A second season, produced in 2022, ran for five episodes of 26 minutes each on Voot Select, directed by Abhishek Sengupta, with the principal cast returning; its synopsis picks up with Sahil missing and the Gujrals backed into a corner.⁶^•¹⁷ Season 2 is currently streaming on JioHotstar.⁶

Origin and development

The concept came from Bodhitree Multimedia's producers Sukesh Motwani, Mautik Tolia, and Persis Siganporia, brainstorming just after India's lockdown was announced while writing for future Netflix and television projects. Motwani described the seed idea as a big family scattered in lockdown, talking on video call, in which one member contracts the coronavirus; the producers wanted to explore deviant human behavior, crime, and morality during such a crisis.¹^•³ Verve magazine described the result as the first scripted Indian show to incorporate the pandemic as an integral part of its plot.⁷

Lockdown production method

A crew-less shoot. Because Maharashtra was under lockdown from March 2020, the series was shot entirely from the actors' homes with the team and cast meeting only virtually.¹³^•¹ Writer-director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat called it "a crew-less shoot on set. Crew-less but not clueless."²

The production standardized on iPhones to keep footage quality uniform and to exploit the phone's simplicity; actors downloaded FiLMiC Pro, an app that raises smartphone footage to professional-camera quality.² Arjun Mathur, asked first about his internet speed and home devices, used an iPhone 11 Max and a MacBook Pro, the latter giving the director and director of photography Piyush Puty a bird's-eye view of his framing over Zoom.²

Actors as their own crew. The cast attended a three- or four-day workshop on shooting with phones, took the filmmakers on virtual house tours to select settings, and doubled as their own stylists, makeup artists, production designers, and gaffers, with family members as cameramen; Sanjay Kapoor bribed his son to operate his camera.²^•⁷^•¹⁴ The team shipped props to actors' homes when scenes required them, such as a wall-mounted TV beaming the news, and used improvised fixes elsewhere: because a sea view from one side of Sanjay Kapoor's house would contradict his character's Gurgaon home, all his scenes were shot on the other side.² Each day was split in two, with one actor filming daytime scenes in the first half and another shooting night scenes in the second, since the team could not push actors beyond eight or nine hours.²

Filming took about a month, followed by a few weeks of editing, before the series debuted on 20 August 2020.²^•⁵ Because the actors could not share a room, video calls were central to the plot itself, with the story leaning on WhatsApp video calls and group chats between the Gujral family.² The Print noted that the production offered a possible glimpse of how film and web production might look in the post-Covid world.¹³

Reception

Reviews divided over the script while generally crediting the experiment. The Times of India called it a predictable murder mystery, criticizing a weak script and underdeveloped parallel tracks, but praised Sanjay Kapoor's return to a lead role and Shweta Tripathi Sharma's performance as the viewer's eyes and ears.⁴ Koimoi praised the taut screenplay, sharp editing, and background score, noting that the four episodes run to under two hours in total.¹² India Today found the show worth the viewer's time despite some monotonous visuals and unnecessary subplots.¹¹ The Indian Express's Shubhra Gupta called it an interesting experiment and a timely fictional intervention.¹⁵ The technical slickness of the lockdown shoot was widely praised.¹⁶

On IMDb the series holds a 7.8/10 rating from about 15,000 users, with season 1 episodes rated between 7.5 and 7.7.⁹ The series received 1 win and 14 nominations, including 2020 Asian Television Award nominations for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Shweta Tripathi), Best Original Screenplay, and Best Theme Song.¹⁰

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Genre web series: horror, thriller, science fiction, and mystery

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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