Basil Okpara Jr is a Nigerian programmer who develops mobile games, using free programming application called Scratch 2.
Scratch 2 allows users to create games, animations, and stories online or offline. Basil has used this application to develop over 30 mobile games.
According to the 9-year-old, it takes him only about 30 minutes to create a mobile game.
Growing up, Basil used to play a lot of mobile games, according to his father, Basil Okpara Sr.
“I bought him a tablet when he was 4 years old because I saw that he was always grabbing phones to play games with. He played Candy Crush and Temple Run a lot,” he told CNN.
“Out of annoyance, I said to him, ‘you are always playing games, can’t you think about building your games so others can play yours too?’. I was angry when I said it and I did not know he took it seriously,” he added.
Okpara Sr consequently registered his son for a boot camp organised by Codefest International, where Basil gained knowledge of emerging technologies like robotics and virtual reality.
“I learned how to build games at a boot camp. Now, I build to keep me busy when I am bored,” Basil told CNN.
Since then, Basil actively showed interest in learning how to make his games, prompting his parents to buy him a laptop and register him to learn the first steps of building games.
Basil, who wants to be a scientist in the future, titles his games based on what they are about.
The games are still in their raw form and can currently only be accessed on computers that have Scratch 2 installed.
But according to his father, one of them, titled Frog attack, will be available to the public on Google play store in August.