Matatu Game by Kola Studios

It’s a popular game in Uganda; some people simply call it Cards while others call it by its real name, Matatu. The goal of the game is to play all your cards before your opponent. The player that’s first to place all their cards wins. Using the popular playing cards a group of friends can sit around playing Matatu for hours. This week, we interacted with the Kola Studios team, the creators of this game, who are working out of our space, Outbox Hub and are an inspiration to several other teams and young people. Matatu can be traced back to it's humble beginnings at the Sub-Saharan Android Developer Challenge 2011. The ninjas, as they perceive themselves, at Kola studios have successfully transferred this experience to the smart phone, creating the region’s best digital card game, Matatu for Android. Theresa Karungi, the Product manager at Kola Studios says, “We all wanted to create something significant and make a mark.” But everybody knows that success doesn’t happen overnight, it’s usually preceded by tons of hard work. SuccessesA few weeks ago I watched the team beaming with excitement because Matatu was one spot behind Rovio’s Angry Birds in the Play Store. In a matter of hours all that had changed and Matatu had jumped ahead of Rovio’s title and now sits in the top 3 Games. “Matatu surprised us all when it went head to head with and beat Angry Birds,” explains Theresa, “we totally didn’t expect this.” The Android market boasts hundreds of thousands of apps and developer teams from all around the world and the Kola Studios team always knew they’d get this far up the chart but not this soon. These five “ninjas” include Karungi Theresa, Guy Acellam, Okalany Daniel, Daniel Nuwe and Jasper Onono  “In February of 2012 we decided to get serious and turn this StartUp around” says Theresa who is still at university, “Kola is the Luganda verb for work and we push ourselves to the limit.” With over 3000 downloads in the Android Play Store, Matatu boasts over 20,000 games played per day! Theresa says, “It’s been a journey, every time we think we’ve hit rock bottom something happens and motivates us to push even harder.” “The best things so far have been; being nominated for the Mobile World Summit Award as finalists from East Africa, and being given a spot to present at Google’s Uganda Conference earlier this month which got us a lot of publicity.” ChallengesBut the team has its share of challenges. “Matatu is a free app which means we have to find other ways to make ends meet,” explains Theresa, “we currently take on client work and companies hire us to develop games and mobile applications for them. If we had financial backing we’d work full time on more games and take this to a whole new level.”  Future PlansThis space changes quickly but the guys at Kola Studios are not lying down. Theresa says, “We have been working on Matatu 2.0 which will be released in the coming weeks.” The current version sports a multiplayer mode where you can play against someone else through the internet but the new version will feature even deeper social integration and will be available on the Android Play Store, the Samsung App Store, Facebook, and the Chrome Web Store. “Matatu 2 will be the best of the best” Theresa says, “we’ve put a lot of thought and work into it and we can’t wait to get it out there. It will have more modes of game play including joker mode and a timed game.”  “We are working on iOS version for the Apple App Store, a Windows Phone version and Blackberry as I speak and all will be released before this year ends.”   If you see me today, in a bank queue or in transit tapping away on my phone I’ll be playing Matatu, it’s an excellent app and if you have not downloaded it yet you’re definitely missing out. Click here to visit the Android Play Store and get yourself the greatest card game of all time! You can thank me afterward.