14-year old knocks Angry Birds off perch
The time-wasting phenomenon that is Angry Birds has finally been relieved of the top position in the app download charts; a position it occupied for most of last year. Its successor? A ball game devised by a 14-year old boy.
Already downloaded more than 2 million times from Apple's iTunes store, 14-year-old Robert Nay’s Bubble Ball game was devised with the help of his mum and his local library, a stark contrast to the 17-strong professional team at Finnish game-makers Rovio who put together Angry Birds.
The Utah teenager launched an Apple-compatible version of the game at the end of 2010 following more than a month of development and 4,000 lines of code, and within two weeks caught the eye of the industry with Ansca Mobile co-founder Carlos Icaza commenting: "Because it's so simple, I think I can beat it. "You go 'yeah right', and then you realise there's a lot of little tricks to make this actually work."
Physics-based puzzle game Bubble Ball challenges players to move a small blue ball from one side of the screen to the other by steering it around various obstacles.