14-Year Old’s iPhone App Beats Out Angry Birds

It took Robert Nay a month of coding at the public library to develop “Bubble Ball,” a free, physics-based puzzle game

It took Robert Nay a month of coding at the public library to develop “Bubble Ball,” a free, physics-based puzzle game that has been downloaded more than two million times in two weeks.

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Mr. Nay is 14, in eighth grade and lives in Spanish Fork, Utah. Last week, Bubble Ball knocked the hugely-popular game Angry Birds out of the #1-most downloaded spot in the App Store’s free category, making iPhone game developers of all ages feel bad about themselves.

“Some of my closest friends in the programming world started sending me e-mails [saying] ‘I need to get off my ass,'” said Carlos Icaza, co-founder of Ansca Mobile, which makes the software development kit (SDK) that Nay used to build Bubble Ball. Nay’s video of Bubble Ball is below.

But those other programmers had better hurry up, because Robert, who plans to pursue a career in computing, said he’s already plotting his next move…

Aside from excelling at school, Robert plays the piano, mandolin and trumpet. But given the response to “Bubble Ball,” he said he’s going to be carving out more of his time to work on his next application.

The young Nay, who built his first website in third grade, has already released an Android version of the app. He’s started calling his company Nay Games and is working on a new game. Hire him, Rovio, before he takes you and the Birds out.

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries

14-Year Old’s iPhone App Beats Out Angry Birds