If you’ve been wiling away work hours this past week playing Impossible Rush, the maddeningly addictive iPhone game in which you try and match colour panels against balls as they fall faster and faster, then you have a 15-year-old boy from Sydney to thank.
The Sydney Morning Herald today profiled Ben Pasternak, who told them that he designed the minimalist game, with the help of a similarly-aged overseas coding friend, while he was bored one day in a science class. Take a moment to let that sink in.
The game, which launched six weeks ago, has racked up hundreds of thousands of downloads, and been in the upper reaches of the app store charts around the world.
Impossible Rush is reportedly raking in mad money thanks to advertising, although Pasternak and his co-designer aren’t seeing any of that, after selling the game – which they weren’t even planning to release – to another friend for $200.
Far from being unhappy at this turn of events, the 15-year-old Pasternack – who is already a veteran in the tech world, thanks to his popular YouTube channel, in which he reviews Apple products – is plotting his next crack at the big time.
For his next trick, the junior Zuckerberg says that he would quite like to create the number one app in the world. At present, he is working on a project called One, which aims to bring “Facebook, Twitter and Instagam into one timeline, inbox and notification panel.”
“So many kids his age just sit at home and play games,” said Pasternak’s mum, “but he’s not interested in that. He’s interested in creating new technology.”
Whole thing kind of puts whatever you did today in perspective, right?
Image via Facebook
