Tunisian mobile gamers win a cow

Pamela the cow awaits her new owners at the gaming company's headquarters

A couple in Tunisia have walked away with an unusual prize - a cow - after they recorded the top score in a locally developed mobile phone game, it's reported.

Pamela the cow spent two weeks at the game developer's headquarters in Tunis before being awarded to the unnamed couple at the beginning of May, the Tuniscope news website says.

The pair triumphed in a strategy game called Bagra - literally "cow" - which consists of keeping a herd of cows and preventing other players from stealing them, while trying to pinch as many as possible from other herds, Shems FM radio reports.

In-game purchases allow players to buy kits that help with cattle-rustling activities, the game's Tunisian developer Digital Mania says, noting that all purchases are in Tunisian dinar instead of US dollars, thus helping the national economy.

Other winners took home phones and tablet computers, with a second cow named Brigitte now being offered as the next bovine prize, Tuniscope says.

Brigitte's fate is uncertain though, with Digital Mania CEO Walid Sultan Midani saying that top gamers can choose to take the live cow, donate it to charity, or collect their prize as raw meat.

Pamela's story seems to have ended happily, with Tuniscope viewers watching her being driven away to her new home in the back of a pick-up truck.

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