A quick look at Itch.io list of popular free games at the start of March 2024 features the usual gambit of games with seemingly traditional key art. However one of those games isn’t like the others, because it features a character from a non gaming app that has been placed in a horror setting – Unolingo. The game was picked up and played by a bunch of streamers (Kubz Scouts, Bijuu Mike etc) with large communities.

Unolingo was developed by Kenyan Roose Mwandira and was a gig he picked up on Fiverr whereby another YouTuber(TheCodingSloth), requested he make a horror game about the Duolingo Bird. TheCodingSloth provided the Duolingo bird model, voicelines, footstep sounds(for the bird) and music. The only other requirement he requested was that Roose made sure the puzzles involved language learning, which he duly obliged with. 

“After graduating from university, I was just a solo game developer working on my project and after I released it (Terror: Evocation II), I couldn’t get a job so I decided to start a Horror game gig on Fiverr. At the time, Fiverr was the best choice for me as I noticed the demand for Horror games was there and I knew I could deliver even better quality games if I took it more seriously. After several months of doing Fiverr, I became the highest rated Developer that specializes in Horror games, which attracted a lot of clients for me. Before my Fiverr popped up, I had eventually gotten a job as a Software Engineer but my pursuit and passion for game development was still very unrelenting so I quit the Job to focus more on freelancing, which was a huge risk . Succeeding on Fiverr was not easy at all and required a lot of sacrifice, as sometimes I have multiple projects to work on which I have to deliver at a very fast pace and I have to maintain the best quality possible. Currently my Horror game gig has about 35 five star positive reviews after doing Fiverr for a year and a half.“

Before the Duolingo project popped up he had developed dozens of other projects that had varying degrees of success. Some were simply prototypes whilst others never made it to release. Some of the other projects that were never shipped can be found on his portfolio here

“The reception this game has gotten has been very encouraging. After my last game release, I realized I needed a social media presence but didn’t know how I could grown one, this game was the best opportunity for me to do just that since the YouTuber that hired me has over 70k subscribers and offered to give me a shout out and made a video about the whole thing too from his perspective. I now plan on doing more videos on YouTube when making the games as I plan on growing my new channel. For now, the videos are from the perspective of a Fiverr game developer but soon I will start making videos about my own games too. This is how I plan to grow an audience.“

With Fiverr requests and gigs slowing down, Roosevelt is taking steps to achive his goal of making and releasing a commercial game of his own.

“I am still on the lookout to have a more sustainable game development career. Right now, I signed up for Africacomicades Spark Fellowship Program of which I hope to find a sustainable game development job through this program. As far as my solo game development career, I want to learn how to market a game before it’s release as I have been working on a new IP to be released for mobile then PC. I also want to release a free game of my own on Itch.io to also help gain a following,” Roosevelt concluded.