CHALLENGE:

Creating a viral and addictive social game without a previous game development background is easier said than done. Making the most of it and then remaining successful is something else.
Slagalica basically began as a hobby project. Four friends landed on an idea for a web game while still working together in a telecommunication software industry. The challenge was to create an app which would make a breakthrough in social gaming industry with neither investments, marketing expertise, nor graphic designing skills.

SOLUTION:

A real-time multiplayer quiz game seemed like a good solution. People like to have their knowledge examined, and this is especially the case with regards to a competition between others. Such a game could tap into the power of all the social networking habits. You can sit at home, be clever, compete with your friends, and be recognized. And what’s more, you can come back to it, day after day…
Slagalica development started in 2011. The first version was launched at the beginning of 2012 and it soon became the number one game in the region, breaking all the records in growth rate, number of users, and social media hype. Shortly after the release, there was no classroom, store, or café where people weren’t playing or discussing Slagalica. With over a million users, Slagalica captured one-third of all Facebook users in Serbia in just a few months. Later that year, it has seen explosive growth with the advent of greater usage through mobile devices. Nowadays, Slagalica is still the most popular app in the region and it has been used by more than XXX million users.

IMPLEMENTATION:

The road to success, however, is rarely straightforward. Implementing a custom real-time solution for a huge number of users was a quite challenging task. Back in 2011 Web sockets were not supported by the existing web servers and browsers. HTML5 was still not standardized and we had no previous experience in web development. Slagalica required zero latency interaction between the users. All the game engines and real-time multiplayer frameworks in the market were either not flexible enough or simply too expensive.  …Bla bla… The coding was done from scratch and Slagalica was fully developed without usage of third party libraries and frameworks.

Early success of the web app brought its own set of problems. In just a few months application server was dealing with more than 20.000 active user connections at the time and it exceeded maximum number of allowed Linux OS sockets.

CONCLUSION:

It’s not just about creating an app; it’s about getting creative and giving the people what they want over and over again.

This often tends to be the result when the founder of a company, or the creator of an app, is an actual user or gamer.

The company has developed many software products since 2012, but its flagship app Slagalica remains the most popular game to date.