Niwot, Colorado (PRWEB) November 30, 2012

Jonah Rubin, an experienced 14-year-old software developer, in collaboration with makegameswith.us has released his first iOS game entitled Cheese Miners, a side-scrolling, shoot-em up action game. Cheese Miners is set on a futuristic version of Earth’s Moon, where it is discovered that NASA lied and the moon is in fact, at least partly, made out of cheese. Your goal, collect the cheese from the surface of the moon while avoiding moon craters, missiles, and dangerous moon mice monsters.

Rubin conceptualized and began development of the Cheese Miners game in July 2012 while participating in an internship with makegameswith.us, a Palo Alto, CA based incubator of iOS platform games. Jeremy Rossmann, co-founder of makegameswith.us remarked, Jonah represents exactly the type of game designer we are looking to collaborate with: young, talented, focused, and creative. I was impressed with how quickly he learned Objective-C and the Kobold 2D framework that we use to develop exciting iOS games. He exhibits a professionalism far beyond his years.

Shortly after its release Cheese Miners quickly advanced to a top 10 position in iOS Action and Arcade games in several countries around the world. In addition, a discussion of Jonah and Cheese Miners made it to the top of the popular Y Combinator-sponsored HackerNews discussion group.

Cheese Miners is not Jonahs first foray into software development. He began learning to program when he was nine years old, first with Java, then HTML and CSS, followed by Ruby, and then Python and Django, and now Objective-C. Neither is Cheese Miners Jonahs first publicly available application. He has three others to his credit.

The first is a simple, but well regarded Android application called The Decider that is used to help people make decisions. Remarked Rubin, I wrote The Decider so I could learn the Android platform. The app came in handy when deciding which restaurant my family should go to on Sunday nights.

Second, in conjunction with his teacher, Aaron Merriam, Jonah developed a social networking website for puzzle enthusiasts called The Confoundry (http://www.confoundry.com). Said Merriman, I was Jonahs homeschool teacher during which we team-developed The Confoundry site. This was no simple, crank-out-a-website-over-the-weekend effort. It was a five-month project where there were serious design issues that had to be worked out and non-trivial programming, graphical design, marketing, and community building work to be done. We collaborated every step of the way. I was amazed with how quickly a (then) 12 year old learned to use Python and the Django framework.

Third, Jonah was contracted by the American Journal of Psychiatry to develop a website optimized for mobile devices. The resulting site, http://www.AJPclinical.com, was designed, developed, and fielded by Jonah. Remarked Dr. Robert Freedman, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Pharmacology at the University of Colorado Denver, and Editor-in-Chief of American Journal of Psychiatry, I was delighted to work with Jonah on this project. I provided the basic specification of what was required and he determined the technologies to use, secured the domain, and got everything working. We would discuss design ideas and he would then implement them. It was as if I had contracted with a professional development firm.

Now that Cheese Miners is available and off to a roaring start, Rubins second iOS game called Polarity, also developed in collaboration with makegameswith.us, is nearing completion and will be available by the Christmas season. According to Rubin, Polarity is an engaging strategy game that provides a very different experience compared to Cheese Miners.

About Jonah Rubin

Jonah Rubin is a 14-year-old software developer hailing from Niwot, Colorado. He has been developing software since he was nine years old and is proficient in a wide range of software technologies. Jonah schooled at home for three years and is now boarding at Ridley College in St. Catharines, Ontario.

About MakeGamesWithUs

MakeGamesWithUs is a learning resource and iOS game publisher for individuals and small teams. Anyone with a mac and a background in object-oriented programming can learn how to make iPhone games at http://www.makegameswith.us. Once developers start on their original games, MakeGamesWithUs offers tools like automated global high score tracking and analytics to facilitate game development, produces all the art and music for games, and publishes them. MakeGamesWithUs has already published six games developed by high school and college students and are currently collaborating with 20+ developers on bringing their games to the App Store.