Throughout 2017 and early 2018, I developed a suite of fifty-fifty games in which players could match vocabulary to images. Caoga caoga (Irish) was the most notable version, officially released and downloaded over 50,000 times. Other versions including pół na pół (Polish) and Fünfzig-Fünfzig (German) where made available to test, but never fully released due to work commitments.

Development of these games on a zero budget with full responsibility for coding, concept, design, translation and marketing was a considerable undertaking, but one I am immensely proud of. A quick Google reveals that Caoga caoga still has a high rating of over 4 stars, while it is mentioned on numerous best of Irish apps articles and educational resources for primary schools.

A few days ago I received an email from a Caoga caoga user that the app is stuck on a black screen, and coincidentally a few hours later a reminder from Google Play that the app would need to be updated to target newer APIs in order to remain on the store.

The fifty-fifty suite of games were developed using Unity and C#, a technology I no longer professionally use. Could an older game engine and newer Android SDK be compatible? Possible, but a lot of work would probably be required as the last app release was almost five years ago.

If Unity is no longer valid, how could Caoga caoga hypothetically be saved? One option would be to port the C# code to Dart and use the Flutter. Even only considering the bare minimum, close to a month of full-time work would probably be required.

I am currently, however, fully booked with clients and have no capacity, while delegation to an external developer would cost thousands of Euros. For a free to play game with no revenue from advertising or otherwise, time and/or monterey investment is unfortunately impossible.

So, in short, Caoga caoga will be retired on Android effective the end of August. The iOS version will remain on the App Store until Apple decides otherwise.

In the current trend of remakes, reboots and sequels, perhaps another iteration of Caoga caoga will unexpectedly arrive in the future. Until then, thanks to all who have downloaded, tested, played, shared and gave their feedback for the whole fifty-fifty suite.

Slán go fóill.