Creation of Game a Culmination of Years of Play

They have been playing online games for years, but finally decided to take that to the next level—and create one themselves.

And in March, eighth graders Tyler Stark and Theo Rabke created  To The Moon!, a game designed for the iPhone, iPad and Android markets.

“It’s a culmination of playing years of games and wanting to make something fun and interesting,” Stark said.

The game was created through Power Apps, a development team Stark recently created to build similar games. Stark, who is the lead programmer, took about four months to develop it, as he took care of the programming, game design and sound design, while Rabke wrote the storyline.

A friend of theirs, Stark said, took care of the graphics of the game, which involves sending a spaceship into the sky and to the moon, while players try to grab additional fuel and other important items.

But, Stark said, there was never a real decision to move forward with the game, it just happened.

“I had started messing around with making a game, and eventually it started to really turn into something I thought people would like,” he said. “So I got a graphic designer and released it.”

Stark said putting together his first game, while successful, was a bit more unorganized than he would like for the future, and he and his team—Rabke and recently included Bridgewater eighth grader Dylan Gottlieb—are hoping things go a little more smoothly in the future.

“That’s one of the things I want to fix when working on my next game,” he said. “I learned programming from a combination of books, the Internet and just messing around.”

“In creating To The Moon!, all I really wanted to do was gain some experience for my next game,” he added. “I don’t really expect my first try to do all that well so I’ll use the experience gained to apply to my next project.”

Still, Stark said in a press release his company sent out, he wanted to create a game that would last.

"Games such as Doodle Jump which are fun at first become boring very quickly," he said. "I wanted something that I could play for a long time and still have fun with."

But despite any initial slip-ups, Stark said there has been a good response to his first game.

“In about two weeks, we had around 100 downloads,” he said. “It’s certainly not comparable to titles like Angry Birds, but it’s good enough for a first try.”

In the iPhone App Store, the game currently rates four out of five stars from customers.

Stark said in the release that he was also excited to get his game into the Android market.

"I feel like the Android operating system has a lot of potential, but the biggest thing hindering its success is the unavailability of great games and applications," he said.

And now, Stark said, his team is hard at work on its next game.

“We are working on it in a much more organized fashion,” he said of the work being done by himself, Rabke and Gottlieb. “We are also working together on the gameplay and concept to make sure it’s more fun and enjoyable.”

For more information on the team, check out the game’s page at the onlysiteyouwilleverneed.com.