¡La Lotería!
If you grew up in a Mexican household, you must know how to play Lotería, the Mexican version of bingo. Family and friends would come together to play lotería, using beans or coins to mark their cards. But what if there was a way to play online with your friends?
Jesus Emmanuel Loera, a civil engineering senior, and Aida Esmeralda Loera, a computer engineer senior with a concentration in software, both at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, have developed a lotería app with their older brother Juan Loera, a University of Texas Brownsville alumni and software engineer. The app is called La Lotería.
They said the idea was born a couple years ago, while looking for a mobile game to play as a family. “When we looked into the Apple store and Play store, we didn’t find anything close to what we wanted to, like an actual lotería game that we could actually play together,” said Aida. “So that was the motivation to create a game. If it doesn’t exist then let’s get to working.”
La Lotería is a mobile game, different from the other lotería games available on the Apple and Play stores. It includes five different game modes: the traditional lotería, cuatro esquinas, pozito, jarras and carta llena. The players can select the amount of tablas they want to play with, and they are fully customizable. The players can edit their tablas, choosing which cards they want on it and their position. If a player doesn’t feel like picking and choosing, the game also gives you the option to randomize the cards. Players can also play solitary matches, against computers, or they can play against Facebook friends. La Lotería can also connect to Facebook and host a match against up to four friends, having five players in total.
Another unique element this app has that no other lotería mobile game has is its three-dimensional illustrations. Everyone grew up looking at the same two-dimensional cartoons, but the Loeras gave the traditional lotería imagery a modern make-over. Jesus, during the early stages of the app, came up with different versions of the characters. He said his 3-D building knowledge obtained at UTRGV helped him develop three-dimensional versions of the lotería characters like el borracho, la dama, la chalupa and more. They are currently working on creating a short-animated series with these characters.
La Lotería has been in the works for three years. The Loeras said the app is not completely done because it still has some bugs that need to be fixed. However, they said it is already available on the Apple and Play stores. The Loeras released the app last month as a test release, to try it with their friends and family to see how the game runs. They expected no more than 2,000 downloads for the test release. However, it was downloaded more than 12,000 times in Google Play, even in countries like El Salvador. Their target market was young people who prefer playing games on smartphones. They said they got a lot of young people but then, they showed it to their parents and grandparents. This increased the age demographics for the game. “The game is made to be easy to play,” shared Jesus. The app is an all-ages game that even people who aren’t too “techy” with smartphones can play.
A newer and improved version of La Lotería will officially launch later in September. The short-term goal is to hit 100,000 subscribers by the end of the year. The Loeras said their long-term goal is getting between 1 million and 2 million downloads in 2021. Their main goal is to put Brownsville on the map and to show that there’s talent in the lower part of the Rio Grande Valley. The Loeras consider themselves a family of entrepreneurs who are always up for a challenge. They have worked with each other in previous projects but La Lotería was the first project all three siblings worked in together. Aida and Juan worked as the software developers, programing the app, and Jesus was the creative and UX developer, designing and building most of the visuals within the game.
The Loeras’ future plans also include two apps as a continuation of La Lotería. One will be just the barajas and the other will be just the tablas. Players can also expect a gimmicky chancla app that will let you throw chanclas to your friends using your camera.
If you are interested in playing La Lotería, it is available for download in both Apple and Play stores. Jesus said that Android users may experience some technical issues, but these will be fixed in the updated version. For more information, visit Trompo LLC’s website at https://trompo.games
