Techy-wizard Ashley McManamon of Steyning Grammar School has just turned 15-years-old and has already created a device game ‘Starspotter’ from scratch. “I always played games and my brother and I would joke that we could make them better, and then I realised that I might be able to make my own games,” said Ashley. The Steyning resident grew up watching popular Youtube personas reviewing amateur video games and hopes that one day they will be critiquing his own. Starting out using a basic programming language for designing games, Ashley then progressed onto Java by watching online tutorials. “I’m more of a fan of making strategy games because there are so many first person shooters but the new ones now, especially in mobile development, are games that make you think,” he said. Joining forces with school friend, Sam Elson, the two brainstormed and decided to call their venture into gaming Exire Studios. “The game was originally going to be a white dot and you had two seconds to press it and then another would appear. It was quite a plain idea, so from there we added more things like bad dots, so every time you went up a score of ten a bad dot would pop up and you’d have to avoid tapping it.” To make it more recognisable, Ashley decided to make the dot a star and designed the game to appear like retro classic Space Invaders. Available on Android devices for free, Ashley is currently undergoing negotiations to have the app in the iPhone market too. Not just anyone can upload a game into the Android world, as Ashley explained. App developers must pay a licence fee before the product can qualify. “The reason it’s free is because we currently have advertising on it, but we made sure it didn’t ruin the user experience. It just means we’ll get a little more money to put towards new projects.” The response from users has been positive so far with an overall online rating of 4.5 out of 5. To play the game visit: http://bit.ly/1hH2REd
