Microsoft has revealed the winner of its Windows Phone Application Development competition, with local developer Justin Southey’s The Most Addicting Sheep Game claiming top honours.

Southey netted R50 000 prize money for his game, which has become one of the many money earners on the Windows Phone Marketplace in South Africa. According to Microsoft it has already surpassed the 450 downloads mark and these downloads aren’t limited to SA users either, as many users downloaded the title from as far away as Germany and the US.

The Most Addicting Sheep Game is a simple side-scrolling title, which sees gamers employing  sheep to perform actions including jumps and rolls to get across obstacles. These actions have to be timed to coincide with the rhythm of the title’s theme music. The game also features real sheep noises sourced from a local farm located in the Karoo.

From console to mobile

Southey initially designed his game for Xbox Indie using tutorials online and sold nearly 10 000 copies of the game within its first year of its release. When he heard about the Windows Phone App competition, he decided to reconfigure it for Windows Phone.

“It took quite a lot of redesigning to make the game look and feel at home on a touch screen, but the response has been so worth it and the developer tools that are easily available online are fantastically user friendly, which made the journey a simple one,” he said.

Suliman Noor-Mahomed, Microsoft’s audience marketing manager said that the competition was launched to highlight both the new Windows Phone operating system (OS) and to drive the development of local applications for the company’s Marketplace in South Africa. The competition ran between November and December 2011 and resulted in around 70 new, homegrown applications becoming available to Windows Phone users.

“The Most Addicting Sheep Game was a favourite among the judges for a variety of reasons,” Noor-Mahomed explained. “Not only is it incredibly addictive but it is also a quality app, with the design, structure, multi-gestures, movement and sound all being seamlessly integrated.”

Other competition entries that fared well

Other apps to feature strongly in the competition included a News24 app, which was a firm favourite for the business user. The judges liked its fresh user interface, specifically designed for Windows Phone-powered mobile devices as well as the fact that it allows users to easily access the latest news, sport, finance and lifestyle content from the sections screen.

Torchbear was also a firm favourite with the judges. It is a social media information sharing tool that is represented by a “passing of the torch”. Amongst others users can tell where the torch has travelled to and how many people have passed it along. Also featuring strongly was Mosaic, which enables users to build mosaics by employing the photos on their smartphone.

Clifford de Wit, developer and platform lead at Microsoft SA stated that the biggest thing to come from this exercise is the proof that the South African developer market is actually far larger than people realise. He added that this competition marks the start of a focused drive to highlight the talent inherent to this country.

“The talent that lies within our borders is astronomical and we really can’t wait to see how local developers take advantage of a new platform, namely Windows Phone, especially now that Nokia has announced the Lumia. And Microsoft will be right there throughout, helping to market highlighted apps through various channels going forward,” De Wit said.

 

In related news, features making their way into the next version of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 mobile operating system codenamed Apollo, have recently come to light prematurely due to a leaked video.