As of this writing, a game called
Red Bouncing Ball Spikes is the number two paid app on the U.S. iPhone store.
Strangely, it appears to be based on a template for drag-and-drop game creation tool GameSalad called "Red Ball Template" -- which
sells for $10 on tutorial and tools site GSHelper.com.
The template's creator promises that "You can very easily create many levels and turn this into a full game in no time!" -- advice that seems to have been taken extremely literally.
Red Bouncing Ball Spikes uses the same extremely simple artwork that the template ships with.
Things get weirder: users on the
GameSalad forums theorize that the game's developer Louis Leidenfrost may be a pseudonym for a developer called Mateen Pekan. Pekan
is a controversial figure on those forums and elsewhere. The evidence? App aggregator AppDecide
lists the game under Pekan's name.
As with
Flappy Bird, there are accusations that the game's meteoric rise in the charts has little to do with legitimate traffic -- but as yet no conclusive evidence has been produced.
Red Bouncing Ball Spikes was originally released in December, but rocketed to the top of the charts today.
