14-year old boy creates top free iPhone app, surpassing ‘Angry Birds’

Some people study and work for years trying to build, test and develop successful games for the internet age. Others seem to create smash hits without even breaking a sweat. Bubble Ball, a new game for Apple and Android, falls squarely into the latter category. The physics puzzle game that is taking the world by storm was developed by Robert Nay, a 14-year old schoolboy from Utah over ‘a couple of months’.

Bubble Ball challenges players to use objects and gravity to guide a ball to its destination, and has been downloaded over 2 million times in the last two weeks, replacing the legendary Angry Birds as the most popular free app on the Apple App store.

Watch this YouTube clip to see how Bubble Ball works.

How did it happen? All Things Digital reports that “some months back, a friend suggested that if Nay liked his iPod touch so much, perhaps he should try his hand at programming for it. At first he tried the standard Objective-C programming tools, but found the learning curve a little steep. He tried another tool called GameSalad, but didn’t like the results. In the end, he settled on the Corona tools from Ansca Mobile. Corona was easy to use, he said, and also let him write once and publish for both Apple and Android devices.”

The young developer developed the game all by himself, but enlisted his mother’s help when it came to submitting the app to the app store and registering the company, Nay Games.