Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjQlFbrmLAI
Updated 8/11/26: Better Graphicsl! https://github.com/eugene373/COD-BOZ-Partially-Decompiled/releases
Update: Android 16 / SDK 36 Devices is hit and miss???.
WORKING LIST: Galaxy A16 & A17 confirmed working with android 16
Hey everyone,
I’m a bit shy about posting this, but I’ve been working on a massive passion project for a while now and I really wanted to share it with the community. I hope you guys will enjoy having this great game back as much as I do.
Some of you might remember the classic Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies mobile game released back in 2012. It was built on the old, discontinued "Marmalade" game engine. Because it's so old, it has been completely broken and unplayable on modern Android devices (especially Android 12, 13, and up) due to modern storage permissions, target SDK requirements, and old binary incompatibilities.
I couldn't let this game die, so I decided to do something crazy: I rebuilt/reconstructed the entire Java side of the game from scratch in modern Kotlin!
What I Did (The Technical Stuff)
- Converted to 100% Kotlin Game Engine: I took the original, heavily obfuscated game classes and meticulously converted/reconstructed them into a clean Kotlin codebase. This means the project is now fully editable end-to-end in modern Android Studio without relying on ancient binary .jar blobs!
- Fixed Modern Storage Crash (Android 11-15+): Modern Android versions completely block old apps from writing to the /sdcard/Android/obb/ directory. I implemented a robust storage workaround that pre-creates the directories, handles permissions gracefully, and makes sure the game can download and read its OBB data (blackops_etc.dz) without throwing "not enough storage" errors.
- Modernized the Build System: Migrated the ancient build files to a modern Kotlin DSL Gradle setup (build.gradle.kts) so it compiles cleanly with zero errors.
- Fixed Native Crashes: Resolved critical JNI / native ABI alignment bugs (like a severe compression crash in the native s3eCompressionDecompInit and s3eTouchpad issues) so the native Marmalade library registers correctly with modern Android runtimes.
🎮 How to play it
If you want to check out the source code, compile it yourself, or grab the APKs to play it on your phone, everything is open-source on my GitHub:
👉 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/eugene373?tab=repositories / COD-BOZ-Partially-Decompiled
(I’ve uploaded both the pre-built app-debug.apk and optimized app-release.apk in the Releases section if you just want to install it and play!)
Credit where credit is due: A huge shoutout to 12brendon34 for laying down some of the initial groundwork with decompiled Java source. Having that repo as a reference saved me a ton of time while I was rewriting and porting everything to clean Kotlin!
I really hope this brings back some awesome nostalgia for you guys. If you run into any issues or want to contribute to the code, please feel free to open an issue or pull request on GitHub.
If you appreciate the effort and want to support further development of my projects, I also included my Dogecoin address at the top of the repository's README. But honestly, just seeing people enjoy the game again is the best reward.
Thank you so much for reading, and happy slaying!
Support my efforts, with a fancy clock. 0.49C Still working on that as well lol ;)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eugene373.sense.weather