What is Bela Online?
Croatian Belote online was awkward in early 2020: lockdowns, few simple options, and weak phone layouts.
We had already shipped Bela Blok for in-person scoring. Next we wanted a real phone-first online game for people stuck at home.
The Team
Second release from a three-person team; we hope there are more. Friends building things we want to exist. Site · Buy us a coffee.
The Game
Another online card game on the pile. The hard parts were a clear UI, frictionless matchmaking, and one codebase across web, iOS, and Android.
Bots
Bots combine heuristics with Monte Carlo simulation. Handy for casual rounds or when you are one player short.
Public & Private Rooms
Play in public matchmaking or in a private room with a password. At launch you could only join rooms you knew about; that opened up later.
Redesigned cards
Belote is traditionally played with Hungarian playing cards. Players know them, but they do not scale like French-suited decks on small screens. I redrew them for phones while keeping the same visual language.
Launch
We tried two launch plays: one took months, the other minutes. The short one won.
Plan A was an Instagram community: memes about the game and the culture. The page reached ~800 followers by launch. Daily posting was draining; we almost quit several times.
Launch post: ~120 likes, ~1k reach, ~300 link taps.
The account still has a small, engaged audience, but it was a weak launch lever.
A few days later we posted on r/croatia. The thread took off: the download link saw more than 1000 taps in the first hour, and the game hit #1 in Croatian card games for several days.
It has stayed in the top 20 since. We have posted again for major updates and collected plenty of karma along the way.
Stats
- There are around 5,000 daily active players
- There are currently 600,000+ users registered in the game
- More than 10,000,000 matches have been played
- There are around 10,000 matches played daily
Up next
We're working on making it even easier to play with new people.
Download links
You can also buy us a coffee here
