Pogo-Go was a mobile game developed by me in 2013.
I wanted to challenge myself and see how quickly I could make a game. Pogo-Go came to me after the success of Flappy Bird and many other pick up and play mobile games. I made it for fun over the course of about 4 days during my lunch break (and after work). I put it up on the Google Play Store and paid about 50 dollars in ad revenue to have it promoted across the Google Play Platform. The game got around 20,000 downloads in its peak.
The tools I used at the time didn’t have access to the Google Play API for things like high score, achievements, etc. I created my own high score system using MySQL hosted on my own web server. This allowed for a rudimentary high score system where people could upload their scores after each round.
iOS Version
I did end up porting Pogo-Go to iOS. I didn’t have a compatible Mac at the time, so I had to buy a Mac Mini (Cheapest was about $550) and then pay a 100 a year developer license to list my game on the App Store. The iOS version was enhanced with achievements and iOS Game Center leaderboards.
Unfortunately, even with the extra money and effort that went into the iOS port, it quickly got buried in the depths of Apple’s app store. It got about 20 downloads total which was unfortunate. It wasn’t worth paying for the $100 license fee to keep the game on Apple’s platform, so I took it down.
After a while, Google started changing their policies for the Play platform and I moved away from the tools I used to make Pogo-Go. It ended up getting removed from the Play Store after not being updated in a while. Perhaps one day I’ll remake it to work on modern devices!