Dumb it down

The brainchild of a 13-year-old from Cork, PizzaBot has taken the Irish app charts by storm. Haven't heard of it yet? Let us fill you in.

So tell me then, what are the young whippersnappers up to these days? Snapping whippers?

Close enough. A 13-year-old from Cork is making headlines today as he is readying the release of his second mobile app.

A mobile what? One of those Angry Birds thingies?

Sure, you’re on the right track. Harry Moran has been dubbed by RTE today as the world’s youngest mac app developer following the release of last year's PizzaBot and its just-released sequel. The games have hit iOS devices such as the iPhone and have been a huge success.

Interesting… how does the original app, PizzaBot, work?

As the game’s App Store synopsis explains: “An innocent slice of pizza awakes in a kitchen infested by salami. The slice of pizza dons cyborg implants and goes on a quest to battle these terrible invaders as… The PizzaBot.

So he’s RoboCop but in pizza form? I’m intrigued.

It gets better. The game is actually a Space Invaders variant, so it’s easy for anyone to pick up and quickly understand. In total there are 25 levels of “sauce-shooting action”, two enemy types and five wave backgrounds.

Take my money! Actually, hold on… how much?

The game is just 0.79c in the App Store and as of this writing, it’s sitting pretty in the third spot of the Irish ‘Top Paid’ app charts, ahead of FIFA 12, Sonic the Hedgehog and Tetris.

I would like to adopt this super genius, the one you call Harry Moran.

We’re sorry but that probably won’t be possible. However, you can download his latest release, PizzaBot Season(ing)s, which is a clever play on words derived from the Angry Birds follow-up, Angry Birds Seasons.

So what’s in the sequel?

This time around, PizzaBot has (SPOILER ALERT) successfully escaped the Salami. However, different seasonings have now taken over the seasons, and only PizzaBot can stop The Cranberries as they try to take over Christmas.

The what? Dolores O’Riordan has gone mad!

We’re talking about slightly different Cranberries here, sorry.

So how does developer Harry do it?

As the boy genius explained to RTE: "I started doing a club called Coder Dojo. and it teaches kids, and anyone else, how to code and get computers what you want them to do.”

"I basically only made it [the original PizzaBot], I wasn't expecting it to be half the success - I only wanted to put an app up in the App Store. Within the first day it was number one."

Sorry, were you saying something? I’m busy shooting The Cranberries in the face.

Nevermind.