Lucrative mobile games market child’s play

WHEN it comes to developing the latest cellphone game, a successful Cape Town-based company believes it has the process down pat.

Staff at Thoopid, which developed the successful Snailboy, challenged developer RW Liebenberg to come up with a game concept — and an hour later he had Tap the Coin.

Players have to tap their cellphone screens to make a coin bounce. The aim is to keep the coin up for as long as possible, but each tap makes it move faster and higher — and you have to juggle more of them as you reach new levels. If the player does not tap in time, the coins fall off the screen.

“I wanted to create a game that is extremely simple to play and doesn’t really need you to think much — something so simple that people can enjoy it while commuting or taking a break from a serious day’s work. I think I have achieved that,” said Liebenberg.

The game is available for download to Apple and Android devices.

Last year, Thoopid released its debut game, Snailboy. After only a few months, it won the award for best cellphone game from the DevGAMM gaming conference in Kiev, Ukraine.

Since then the game — in which a snail leaps and slides around a garden in search of his stolen shell collection — has been downloaded more than 100 000 times globally and is competing with the likes of the Angry Birds behemoth.

“I hope Tap the Coin will receive the same reception as Snailboy or even better,” said Liebenberg.

A winning game can be extremely lucrative.

For example, the two-yearold Candy Crush is played by about 100 million people every day. It has been downloaded more than 500 million times since being launched on mobile devices. The games either make their money from the low download costs, or from the sale of add-ons.

And that is not child’s play.