4th & Battery Teams With Make-A-Wish For 9-Year-Old-Designed Game

The latest release from Popcap's new 4th & Battery label wasn't designed by any of the company's experienced game makers, but by the nine-year-old Owain Weinert. Weinert first met PopCap through the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Alaska & Washington, and worked intimately with the company to create Allied Star Police, an iOS game of his own design that combines lane-based tower defense with real-time strategy. During the last few months, as part of the studio's "PopCamp," a company event that allows developers to work on projects of their choosing, Weinert collaborated with PopCap developers under the 4th & Battery label to bring his title to life. "Owain was literally like every other designer and developer I've worked with," said 4th & Battery senior producer Matthew Lee Johnston. "The minute he walked in the door he handed us a fully realized game design, figured out to the last detail. He stuck with that vision, and directed the team through the development process like a pro." "When he first sat down to play it, he naturally knew what to do and won his first round easily, which felt to us like we did a good job executing on his plan," he continued. 4th & Battery was originally established as a separate label for PopCap to release "smaller, simpler and sometimes edgier" games, and the label's lineup currently includes Unpleasant Horse and Candy Train in addition to Allied Star Police. Like all of PopCap's 4th & Battery releases thus far, Allied Star Police is free, and is now available on the iTunes App store.