App of the Week (January 9, 2011): Bubble Ball
Usually, when picking our App of the Week, we are attracted to apps and games with eye-catching artwork or an extensively immersive environment. To us, a good-looking app usually means a much more enjoyable and accessible experience that creates devoted fans and often reels in new ones.
Yet, our latest Game of the Week, Bubble Ball, looks nothing like our previous, prettier choices.
So, what does Bubble Ball have going for it? One word: Gameplay!
In Bubble Ball, you’re tasked with a simple mission: Get the ball from point A to point B. Each of the game’s 21 levels gives you a different route to navigate with different game pieces to assist in your deceptively simple-worded quest. Place the geometric pieces however which way you please to create ramps, platforms, and even catapults to send your ball to the finish line. At first, it’s easy; but in the later levels, it can be quite the stumper — but, you will not put your phone down until you figure the very last one out!
Of course, creators Nay Games have left open the option of future updates, which we already imagine will make Bubble Ball be even better. Nay Games say that new levels will be added routinely and different challenging elements (time limits, score by number of attempts, etc.) could also be on the horizon. But even with its bare-bones design, Bubble Ball‘s gameplay alone will be enough to keep us checking back for updates — this game will definitely be on our phones for a while, even though we already beat it in an hour. 
Skeptical? Well, Bubble Ball is a free download, so head on over to the App Store or Android Market (cross-platform, hooray!) to see why we — and 300,000 other users in its first week — love it so much!
* Update, 01/15/2011: Here’s a quick video of Bubble Ball in action:
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Congrats to Nay Games for their app of the week win !
And big high-five to Robert, the creator of Bubble-Ball, as he is only 14 years old.
Carlos
I think the best lesson you can learn from this game is to not let something stop you from making a game. I know a LOT of people who wouldn’t have released this game unless there were “professional quality” graphics — probably me included.
And yet the gameplay isn’t sacrificed at all — and shouldn’t *game*play be king in a game?
Nice job, Robert!
Jay
[...] Bubble Ball has been featured as Ansca Mobile’s Corona Game of the Week! Check out their blog post at: http://blog.anscamobile.com/2011/01/app-of-the-week-january-9-2011-bubble-ball/ [...]
Wow, 14 years old, amazing job Robert!
And I think J.A. is right, it’s not just about professional graphics (see all the Doodle series, or hey, the Wii, it was a huge success even if PS3 and Xbox360 had much better graphics)…
The most important thing is probably the concept and how much you believe in what you’re doing
Brilliant game! I was addicted immediately!
lots of fun!!
[...] the headline says, a Corona-built game named “Bubble Ball”, which was our most recent App of the Week, just passed the most recent version of Angry Birds on the iTunes free games charts. According to [...]
Incredible work and lots of motivation to actually make use of my license now!
Inspirational! Great job, Robert! Makes me want to get off my rear and get some games going….of course now I can’t since I am constantly playing your game.
It is a legendary app of CoronaSDK. I think it hits very sweet spot to CoronaSDK developers
Update : It just crossed the 2 millionth download !
2 Million downloads… WOW. That’s amazing.
Great work Robert!
2 Million downloads that’s Fantastic!!! keep at it you are doing a great job Making Apps
WOW! and HOW? My mind starts to ponder, how on earth can I develop my own game?! Im no game developer neither programmer but I have concept for a beautiful game product. Is there anyone can help me to kick start my game development… I wanna attach this game with my up and coming movie production
have a beautiful day guys!
I knew Robert was smart from school, but I didn’t know about this!! Great Job Robert!! Im proud of ya!!
cool story!!!
[...] the Corona Blog: Corona-built game named Bubble Ball (which was our most recent App of the Week) just passed the free version of Angry Birds: Seasonson the App Store’s free apps chart. [...]
[...] week, when we chose Bubble Ball as our App of the Week, we talked to 14-year-old creator Robert Nay and his mom Kari of Nay Games about their experiences [...]
[...] since Bubble Ball knocked Angry Birds: Seasons off its #1 App Store perch, our servers have been swamped from the [...]
Just want to point out that the link on this blog post to “Android Market” actually points to the wrong “bubble ball”, something in Chinese.
Also, knowing that I’m far from the only one not able to install it, this game won’t even show up in the market if you don’t have android 2.2, and manual install will also fail
Correction: Looks like it’s the right app at that link, but they grabbed the screenshots from the other, Chinese “bubble ball”
argh…ATT/Samsung please update your Captivate to Android 2.2 I want this game
[...] few days later, I heard from a friend that a Corona game called Bubble Ball had gotten over 1,000,000 downloads (now over 7 million downloads!) and that inspired me to go and [...]