London, United Kingdom – Nine months after the release of seventeen year old Ashley Burnett’s iOS & Android game “Type In Time”, it has hit the charts in key markets such as the UK, USA and Australia. Type In Time is a mobile game, developed by the seventeen year old over the summer when he was just sixteen years old. He has marketed it as the “World’s Hardest Mobile Game” due to the aim of the game. In Type In Time, a three letter word pops up and you have to type that word in just one second. If you manage to type the word, you get a point and the process repeats. If you don’t manage to type the word in time, you’ll be presented with a game over screen.

The success of the game is due to a marketing campaign led by Ashley Burnett. After creating a 20 second video on Facebook, featuring emoji’s and popular music from Drake, he paid Facebook to drive views to the video. The video in question is now nearing 1 million views, 750 likes and over 300 comments. Ashley Burnett has told us that the game now has over 40,000 downloads and it’s mainly thanks to this advertisement.

“I created that Facebook advert back in January 2016 and it was successful back then, as I gained 1,000 downloads the day after creating the video. After that I wasn’t spending a lot of money a day and was getting a good decent of downloads, about a hundred downloads a day. Therefore on Saturday I decided to go all in and spend a considerable chunk of my bank account on the video advert. I spent a bit less than GBP100 in 24 hours, which is a lot for me, but it propelled the game into the iOS App Store charts. I was above games with huge budgets such as Words with Friends by Zynga and The Simpsons: Tapped Out by EA. As I do not have a lot of money I had to drop the advertising budget, so the game will probably fall out of the charts soon.”

Type In Time peaked in the charts on Sunday, 22nd May 2016 where the game was in the charts in key markets such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. According to AppAnnie.com, it was featured as a “What’s Hot” word game in Australia, and achieved multiple impressive positions in the App Store charts. In Australia, it was the number 1 word game in the whole country, the 22nd most downloaded Arcade game, the 45th most downloaded game overall and the 140th downloaded app on the whole App Store in Australia. In the UK, a considerably harder market to tap into, it achieved number 4 on the word games charts, number 37 on the arcade game charts, number 86 on the overall game charts and became the 228th most downloaded app in the whole UK. In the hardest market on the App Store – the United States – it was the 48th most downloaded word game, the 37th most downloaded arcade game, the 263rd most downloaded arcade game and the 1000th most downloaded game in the whole United States.

According to AppAnnie, Type In Time also charted in major countries such as Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, France and Germany. Ashley Burnett told us “The game was actually the 38th most downloaded app in the whole of New Zealand back in January. It’s a cool feeling knowing your game is being played around the world.” Ashley Burnett learned to develop games when he was just 15 years old, using tutorials he found on the internet. “I learned how to code in Java when I was 15 using a video tutorial site called Udemy. I then looked at tutorials when I was 16 for a game engine called LibGDX. I started off making games that were quite bad. I eventually got better and I released Type In Time in September 2016 which isn’t a masterpiece but it’s much better than the previous games I would make.” The London teenager is still in school and hopes to start University soon.

Ashley Burnett believes the game could be a viral hit and become the next Flappy Bird with the right marketing. “I think the game is gaining so many downloads when I advertise it because it’s so difficult. It pulls in people the same way that Flappy Bird once did. People get addicted to competing with their friends and end up spending a lot of time playing the game. With the right exposure I think it could become the next Flappy Bird. The success of my advert with limited funding shows that it has potential.”

Device Requirements:
* iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
* Requires iOS 6.0 or later
* Universal Application
* 36.2 MB

Pricing and Availability:
Type In Time 2.3 is free, and is available worldwide through the App Store in the Games category. An Android version is also available through Google Play.

Type In Time 2.3
Download from iTunes
Download from Google Play
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AppAnnie Statistics
Image (Ashley Burnett)

The Ash Code is the name in front of Ashley Burnett’s apps. It was founded in August 2014 after he learnt how to code in Java. The Ash Code specialises in mobile games currently but hopes to expand into developing social apps in the future. All Material and Software (C) Copyright 2016 The Ash Code. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks and registered trademarks may be the property of their respective owners.