Local Developer Turns Zimbabwe’s Favorite Card Game Into A Mobile App

If you give most Zimbabweans a deck of cards, the game they will instantly think of is MaCards or Makasa. The fast paced game that most of us grew up playing at school with fellow students or at home with a group of friends. For the most part we have only played that game physically. However, Tendai Karuma who is based in Norton, has decided to turn playing cards into a mobile app game, Makasa Cards.

It’s available on iOS and Android, and even has a web version. Normally when you hear “online card game,” you think of Blackjack, Klondike, or FreeCell. These are games that confused most of us, with rules nobody ever properly explained. Speaking for myself, I still don’t know how any of those are played. Fortunately, Tendai has given us one we already know and actually enjoy.

Don’t get me wrong, Makasa Cards isn’t the first to do this. As a matter of fact the card game that we play has been played exactly the same or almost similarly by many people from all over the globe. In fact it is a variation of Crazy Eight which originated in the US and has since been adopted and changed to the game we play now.

Within Zimbabwe itself, I haven’t yet seen any app competing in the space Makasa is. In the region there is some competition, Apps like Matatu, Kadi Saba and Kadi, built by developers in Kenya and Uganda, which offer similar games to Makasa.

The concept of bringing local iconic games came off as interesting to me so I decided to take my time to see how the game works. The whole mission was to check whether the game was just another vibecoded AI slop or something that really does work.

Makasa has a number of play modes. There’s standard online matches against other human players. There’s a campaign mode that takes you through story-driven levels, an Offline mode for practicing against the computer, and daily Challenges that hand out rewards for logging in and completing goals.

Maka also has tournaments. The site says you can “climb the ranks and win big prizes” playing a dedicated Weekend Tournament. We haven’t played this one yet so nothing to share on it. Makasa has made it clear, however, that there’s no gambling involved.

Business model wise, right now it’s free to play the games. There are some Google adverts that show in the app. But given their current numbers, this return from that is likely very low. So it’s not clear what funds the “big prizes” you get for winning competitions. Maybe in the future a new subscription model will be introduced to the game.

There’s also a lighter social layer. You earn an in-game currency called $MD as you play, which goes toward unlocking cards for your Collection. You can add friends, see who’s online, and challenge them directly. If you have played chess on chess.com you’re probably familiar with this already.

On the numbers, Makasa is still quite small. The site puts it at over 1,200 players already competing, Google Play lists it north of 1,000 downloads with 269 reviews and a 4.7-star rating. The app was last updated just days ago, so Tendai is still actively building on it, rather than having walked away after launch like many of us devs & vibercoders.

Quite interesting to see someone working on something outside the usual Marketplace apps, CV-writing ones, InDrive for X apps, food delivery apps, and literal InDrive clones.

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