Ex-Forest Pupil launches his own computer game

Joe, 16, who recently left The Forest School after completing his GCSE’s, has been working for Apple since he was 13-years-old and recently launched his own game ‘Cosmic Pop’ into the Apple Store.

It all began when Joe built a small website called ‘Don’t Bother’ that ran gadget and tech based news items.

After ‘Don’t Bother’ featured on another tech website his views rocketed with almost 3,000 hits per day,

“Don’t Bother was pretty big in America,” said Joe.

“When it took off I took on other pupils as interns who helped by writing additional articles for the site. But by this time I was looking for a new challenge so I developed an iPhone app for the website. This went into the App Store with some reasonable success.”

Following the success of ‘Don’t Bother’ and the website app the young tech star was approached by Apple to become a BETA tester for their products; which he has now been doing for a number of years.

“The next logical step was to move into gaming,” added Joe. “I had an idea for a new game and developed a rough draft of it in a couple of months. However it took rather longer, two years in fact, to develop it into the finished product.

“In June this year I launched Cosmic Pop”.

This family friendly game is a 5-level interactive game for the iPad or iPhone and has been available in the app store since the start of June.

“It’s going really well,” said Joe. “I am really grateful to my peers and my teachers at Forest, Mr Jonk, Miss Prades and Mr Steele, who were really supportive and kept me going when it was clear the development of the game was going to take much longer than I thought!”

Joe, who will be going on to Collyer’s in September to study Computer Science, Product Design, Media and Art, hopes to pursue a career in programming, media or graphic design.

He is also about to launch his second App, ‘Fortune Teller’ a good-natured take on a vintage classic. Also be on the lookout for a charming camera utility App in the near future!

“I really enjoyed my time at Forest and the opportunities they gave me. I am looking forward to moving on to Collyer’s and will definitely be continuing with the tech development” he added.

Pictured here is Ex-Forest Pupil Joe McAlister with his own multi-level, family game, ‘CosmicPOP’, which is now available in the App Store.