Koalah lets you place bets on your gaming skills
If you have ever wished someone would just pay you to play video games all day, you may get your chance with a recently launched web game platform called Koalah, which allows players to compete for high scores and cash rewards.
The site currently lets you play a handful of casual games like Snake, an off-brand version of Asteroids, and a Flappy Bird clone called Flappy Koalah. Players are able to place a small wager when they start a game, and the person with the highest score wins the pot.
At the moment, the site appears to be little more than a proof of concept, as there are a very small number of games available, but the creators hope that game developers who want to break free of the strict controls of Apple Inc or Google Inc will adopt the platform.
“We want to liberate game developers from the chains of the Apple App Store and Google Play Store,” Koalah co-founder Ari Lewis told GamesBeat. “Many of our friends play and create games, and they have always complained about how restrictive the Apple Store is. We realized that we could create a solution to this, one that would benefit developers and engage gamers.”
Koalah uses HTML5 for its games, making it relatively simple for developers to create new content for the platform. “The platform is embeddable in a variety of HTML5 game engines,” Lewis said. “Game developers have a new open platform upon which to develop monetize their games.”
Web games are not known to be particularly secure, and poorly designed interfaces can be easily exploited. That is why Koalah uses an anti-cheating algorithm to keep players honest.
“We have created a proprietary Fair Play Algorithm that analyzes every game played to detect how players are wagering and their behavior,” Lewis said. “We are able to detect if a user is acting in bad faith when playing our games.”
Koalah is a new startup fresh out of the Flashstarts accelerator based in Cleveland, Ohio, and the group plans on entering its seed funding phase later this year.
Due to legal concerns surrounding the site’s online gambling features, you are not allowed to register if you reside in any of the following states:
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- Florida
- Illinois
- Iowa
- Louisiana
- Maryland
- Montana
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
Screenshot via Koalah
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