Waterford Youngster Teams Up With Apple

Jordan Casey, a 12 year old boy from Waterford, is now the youngest person in Europe to have developed an app for sale on the App Store.

The app, Alien Ball vs. Humans is described by Apple executives as a version of the classic 'Space Invaders' and is the first step on the ladder for this talented young developer.

Since the age of 9 Jordan has been putting content on the web. His most successful project to date was 'The Club Penguin Cheats Team' which he started in December 2009. When he closed it down it had a staggering 45,000 hits and gave Jordan a taste of the potential of the web. He then started developing music for iTunes, videos of which made him one of the most subscribed in Ireland. But Jordan was soon drawn back to the gaming industry and created Casey Games.

At 12 Jordan began coding small platform games playable on the internet. He called these games: 'Alien Ball'. Jordan continued to learn more about coding and created 'Alien Ball vs. Humans'.

Jordan received an abundance of support in school. His teacher Ms. Alyward – 6th Class St. Declan’s NS - in particular encouraged him to pursue this project. She is particularly proud of his achievement and allowed Jordan to demonstrate the game in class.

At first Jordan’s parents, Clyde and Louise, did not recognise the talent they had under their roof: "We are very proud Jordan considering he taught himself how to code and write the programmes – and worked hard on this app to get it published."

Jordan plans to give 10% of the proceeds from the sales to the SOLAS Centre. "I wanted to give something to charity and I think this cancer charity is really important." said the young developer.

The next project for Casey Games is to develop the Alien Ball character and move him into different scenarios such as racing. He also wants to develop an android app so the game can be downloaded on all smart phones.

(GK)