据venturebeat报道，热门手机游戏《愤怒的小鸟》节日版在上周四被赶下App Store免费应用的冠军宝座，这个强劲的竞争对手并没有什么显赫的背景，它只是一款出自14岁少年之手的物理类游戏《Bubble Ball》。

Bubble Ball

《Bubble Ball》的开发者Robert Nay现在还只是一名八年级的学生，他在妈妈的帮助下，用自己开发的首款iPhone游戏打败了《愤怒的小鸟》节日免费版。据游戏邦了解，《Bubble Ball》仅在上周四当天就创造了40万次下载量，自12月29日在App Store发行以来，该游戏的总下载量已达150万次。不过《愤怒的小鸟》仍然稳坐付费游戏排行榜的头把交椅。

apps list

《愤怒的小鸟》是芬兰开发商Rovio公司出动成批的开发者创造完成的，该公司自2003年以来已开发了不下50款的手机游戏，iPhone平台上的独立游戏开发者并不罕见，但像Robert Nay这种青少年居然也能独自将《愤怒的小鸟》扳倒，实在是后生可畏。

游戏邦还获知，Nay过去就喜欢捣鼓应用编程，他发现使用Ansca Mobile公司推出的Corona SDK，可以轻松开发iPhone游戏。免费版的Corona SDK可支持用户创建复杂的应用，比如说横向卷轴的物理类游戏。用户如果肯花349美元购买付费版本，还可以在App Store上发行作品。

Nay and his mother

Nay自学了Corona所运用的编程语言Lua（游戏邦注：这种语言远比多数iPhone游戏所使用的Objective-C更容易掌握，EA、Tapulous等大型游戏公司也广泛采用Lua），完成了这款游戏的编程和美术设计，他的母亲则帮助设计了大部分的关卡。受到好友的鼓励，他在11月份开始创建这款游戏，用户在游戏中需要运用自己的技巧将一个小球从起点运送到终点。

这款游戏在12月29日登陆iPhone平台后，Nay又在一周后将它投放到了Android Market，虽然Android用户的反应并不热情，但它在iPhone平台的人气却是有增无减，截止本文撰稿，该游戏仍然是App Store中的头号免费应用。

Nay最后还表示，有可能在该游戏中添加付费功能或虚拟商品创造营收，Ansca Mobile公司则表示将提供更多技术支持，让Nay实现这个做法。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Eighth grader knocks Angry Birds out of the top free spot on the App Store

Angry Birds and its variants have dominated the top ranks of iPhone games for the past year. But on Thursday, a game called Bubble Ball ousted Angry Birds: Seasons from the No. 1 spot on the App Store’s top free apps list.

Bubble Ball is the work of 14-year-old Robert Nay, an eighth grader in Spanish Fork, Utah, and his mother Kari. Robert Nay managed to take a free version of Angry Birds Seasons — which has  become a cultural phenomenon with tens of millions of downloads — down with his very first iPhone game. On Thursday alone, Bubble Ball (right) was downloaded 400,000 times. Since its launch on Dec. 29, the game has been downloaded 1.5 million times. The top paid app is still Angry Birds.

That’s pretty good for a solo effort. By contrast, Angry Birds was created by a team at Helsinki-based Rovio, which has dozens of employees and has made more than 50 mobile games since 2003.

The iPhone has had lots of hits by independent game makers. But it is still a surprise to hear of a 14-year-old scoring such a big hit. And it shows that being clever still pays off.

Nay has toyed with programming in the past. But he found that creating an iPhone game was easy thanks to tools such as the Corona SDK from Ansca Mobile, which lets users create graphically rich applications and games for the iPhone, iPad and Android. A free version lets users create sophisticated apps such as side-scrolling games with physics effects. A paid $349 version lets you publish to the App Store.

Nay learned Lua, the language Corona uses, which was much easier than doing a game in Objective-C, the programming language for most iPhone games. A number of big game studios such as Electronic Arts and Tapulous use Lua to make sure their games are efficiently programmed.

Nay did the work on the programming and the art and his mother helped him by designing most of the game levels. After being encouraged by a friend to create an app, he started work in November.

The game has bare-bones graphics, where you try to get a ball to roll from one part of the screen to another by manipulating objects such as a stick or a triangle.

The game went live on the iPhone on Dec. 29 and then the Nays uploaded it to the Android Market about a week and a half later. Corona allows developers to create a game and publish it to both platforms.

On Android, the game hasn’t taken off. But it has grown steadily on the iPhone. Ansca Mobile highlighted the game as its “app of the week” last week, and interest in the title kept on  building. At this writing, it’s still No. 1 on the top free apps list.

At some point, Nay says he’ll try to make some money by creating in-app purchases, or virtual goods for sale, inside the game. Ansca Mobile still has to add the feature that will allow the Nays to do that. Once they do, they can start cashing in on all of the traffic and attention that is sure to come.（source:venturebeat）