Building Matatu Pro

I play games a lot, and I’ve always wanted the chance to build one myself.

Idea

I’ve been playing the Matatu card game on my mobile for quite some time, but recently I had to switch to using a computer for most of my tasks. When I tried playing the game on a computer, I found the user experience to be terrible.

🚨 One noticeable issue is that when you have 7 or more cards in hand, you can’t see all of them or scroll to view them, as shown below.

I tried to find alternatives, but there were none, so I thought a web version might solve the problem, but I couldn't find one either.

Then, on March 26th, I stumbled upon a paper about playing cards. It helped me grasp the terminology associated with playing cards.

After learning a thing or two about card terminology, I issued myself a challenge: to build Matatu for the web within a week, with the deadline set for April 1st.

Build

You need a deck of cards for a card game, and fortunately, when I googled "deck of cards," I found them right on the front page.

I also read an article about how to play Matatu, which provided the foundation for all the logic needed to build the game.

In about 2–3 days, I was able to create the initial user interface.

At this point, I decided to purchase the domain matatu.pro to ensure I wouldn't back out of the project 😃 (which I usually do).

Launch

I announced the launch on April 2nd through LinkedIn and Twitter.

On LinkedIn, I shared two posts: one about the launch and another about how Matatu Pro was born. Interestingly, the latter post had ten times more reach than the launch post.

What next?

I'll continue to make improvements on the overall experience of matatu pro on the web

You can play the game here: Matatu Pro