At 17 years old, Brandon Kynoch is SA’s latest tech sensation after his mobile games became a global hit.

At a time when most parents are desperate to get their teenagers off their screens, Brandon Kynoch is a rare example of how quality screen time can deliver great results. This 17-year-old entrepreneur started coding games at age 11, and has had whirlwind international success with his two most recent titles, Blast and Torus. With his recent school exams behind him, he made time to chat to Tech about his future plans. 

How did you get into programming?

I’ve been coding for about six years now. I’ve always loved technology and video games, and just decided that I wanted to make my own games. So I turned to the internet and started teaching myself. In the beginning, I did a lot of small, basic games just to learn and for fun. 

Tell us about your first two games?

The first game I published was called Blast, which I worked on for about two years. I still consider it a success – it got 6 000 downloads on its first day. After Blast, I worked on some smaller games, which led me to develop Torus, which was a huge success. It was chosen as ‘Game of the Day’ on the Apple App Store in 137 countries, and had more than 100 000 downloads on its first day. 

What have you learned along the way?

One of the biggest problems when I started out was that I never finished any of the games I started. Often, I just got bored of working on a game and gave up. When I created Blast, I consciously decided to finish a game, publish it and make it a success. I really should have started with something simpler, but I learned a lot during the entire development process. 

Spending so much time on Blast made me shift my focus and realise that there’s a lot more potential in hyper casual games where the concept is simple but really fun to play. Developing this type of game is actually quite hard, because you really need to come up with a great idea. But once you have that idea, it’s much easier
to develop.

For the full interview with Brandon, grab your October issue of Tech.