Lim Ding Wen, the 9-year-old behind hit iPhone app Doodle Kids, is now close to completing his arcade game, Invader War, also for the iPhone. According to Lim Thye Chean, Ding Wen’s father, they are only waiting to get their hands on an iPhone 3GS to test the game before releasing it on the App Store.
Check out a video of the game (complete with music) here.
Invader War is a version of the Ding Wen’s original game for the Apple IIGS that he had written in Object Pascal. This iPhone version has been rewritten in Objective-C and Javascript, and he has been working on it since January.
This version is not just a port of his original game though. Ding Wen has also developed the game play over the Apple IIGS version. The original version simply consisted of dodging attacking aliens and killing them. The iPhone version has a story line and power ups. He is also working on boss levels, though this might not make it for the shipping version.
According to Thye Chean, he helps his son by being both coach and competitor. Thye Chean has written a similar game but in Java for the Android platform. The Java game spurs Ding Wen on to develop Invader War. Says Thye Chean: “I chose Android so that he cannot copy my Java codes (not that he would...), but so he can see how boss levels are done, and he can then decide what he wants to do.”
Thye Chean says that his son’s Invader War has now overtaken the Android game in some ways. Invader War has a story line, menus and dialogs and aliens attacking in waves, compared to Android game where aliens merely appear at random. In fact, it has reached the point where Thye Chean says he no longer understands his son’s code anymore.
Ding Wen has planned this to be the first in a series of episodes. “He is thinking of writing Episode 2 entirely in Objective C (but that's the plan only - he is reading up on the Quartz graphics engine),” says Thye Chean. “When he reaches this part, then he will be beyond what I can teach already, since I don't like Objective C!”
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