Mike Gardiner, of Lime Rocket, said it was the first time in the world that independent gaming content had gone into family entertainment centres in such a way.

He said  he got an introduction to TimeZone when the Thirroul start-up was one of 10  chosen  as the first residents of a new national start-up incubator launched by Telstra in Sydney called Muru-D.

‘‘We got a chance to meet the CEO of TimeZone when he was in Australia and that is how we first got the conversation going,’’ Mr Gardiner said.

‘‘He saw the product and then he quickly decided to trial it in Australia first at their highest performing centre at Charlestown in Newcastle last spring. 

‘‘The idea was to try and find an Australian site that matches the Singapore and South-East Asia experience. Because that is where they are really interested in taking it.’’

The Lime Rocket teams spent 10 days in Newcastle and the test proved so successful the final version was installed on Friday.

‘‘After Charlestown we want to go into a site in Asia,’’ he said.

‘‘TimeZone has around 300 sites globally. The next stop is Singapore for us.’’

TimeZone was interested in  putting the game in the front window of the store and running free games that face out into a food court that people can play with their smartphones as the controller.

The idea was to use Lime Rocket’s free game to drive traffic and it worked so well a new version of the device was installed this week to improve the experience.

‘‘We proved how well it worked within the first three days and that is also what they want to do for their Asian centres because they are all in malls,’’ Mr Gardiner said.

Lime Rocket is charging a monthly fee for each store and the set-up costs are minimal because players use their smartphones as controllers. The only real outlay is the investment of a screen inside the window.

In the past, Lime Rocket has projected its games onto the sides of buildings and at festivals and other events. That started almost as soon as it developed its first social game,  Buzzy Republic.

‘‘We previewed our technology that turns a smartphone into a game controller to enable the audience at music events, conferences and eventually cinema to interact with the screen,’’ Mr Gardiner said.

Lime Rocket has attracted so much international attention it was invited to the US  in February to take part in the Google-sponsored BlackBox program.

Lime Rocket was selected from start-ups in Australia to spend two weeks in Silicon Valley.

‘‘It was paid for by Google and we were exposed to all these amazing founders and venture capitalists,’’ Mr Gardiner said. 

‘‘We experienced venture interest and we have one US based investor we are continuing to communicate with. We made some amazing contacts in the Silicon Valley eco system.

‘‘And we have one site over there that is interested in putting our product into co-working space in San Francisco that has 140 start-ups in it.’’