TAXI RANKED

 Back in October 2022 four young university graduates, Mamello, Eric, Rayyan and Ravisha founded Vetkoek Studios and began an epic journey to make South Africa’s most iconic mobile game.

 If there’s one thing that our studies had taught us, it was the importance of preserving and digitizing South African culture. When we noticed that the offering of South African gaming experiences was very slim, we realized that we had no choice but to make a game that adapted the South African experience into a fun and chaotic package for both casual and hardcore gamers.

Taxi Ranked is a South African taxi game where you run from cops (unless you have a cold drink), dodge potholes, pick up passengers, knock over streetlamps and cause unimaginable chaos on the roads of Mzansi. With over 500 000 views online and over 480 000 downloads so far, the game is taking the country by storm. 

Our journey was not all fun and games though, especially when we had to still find day jobs to pay the bills. It was our passion for games that motivated us to spend our nights making art, designing, researching and deciphering cryptic code errors. Now we are proud to present South Africans with a fun, relatable and accessible video game: Taxi Ranked! 

While PC games are generally easier to produce, we realised that when it comes to the South African market, and Africa in general, most people are only able to access games via their phone. If we were making a game by Africans for Africans it simply had to be a mobile game. 

What is the one experience that every South African can relate to in some way? Well, whether you are a commuter, a driver or simply a bystander you have witnessed some kind of taxi mania. We figured it’s time to put the player in control of their own taxi and give them a choice: do you follow the rules of the road, or do you take the opportunity to cause some shenanigans?

What brings people together more than food and games? Honestly we didn’t put much thought into it, we just wanted to come up with a name that stuck in people's minds while maintaining the “local is lekker” mantra.

Taxi Ranked can be downloaded onto your phone on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store for free! If you would like to stay in the loop about our next big project you can find us on every platform, just search for Vetkoek Studios.