MEET THE DEVELOPER
The High School Puzzle Master
Here’s how you know Brayden Gogis is really into creating apps: He made one to ask his girlfriend to Homecoming.
Brayden, 17, is a junior at Franklin Central High School on the south east side of Indianapolis. And his homecoming app (which, as you might guess, is not available on the App Store, sorry) is just one of the many he’s created since the second grade.
No, really. Second grade.
“I always loved playing games on my iPod touch,” says Brayden, “but then I was like, ‘I want to know how to make one of these.’”
Brayden is the writer, designer, and coder behind the curious puzzler The Company Game, in which you stumble into the nefarious doings of an unnamed company. To unpack its many secrets, you’ll solve puzzles, crack codes, and manipulate your iPhone or iPad in all sorts of ways. (We don’t want to spoil anything, but in at least one level, screen brightness plays a key role.) The idea for the game came to him as many of his ideas do: from his family. “It was really me making a game my mom would like to play,” Brayden says.
The entire Gogis clan is into puzzles. Brayden’s dad, Gary, is a graphic designer; his mother, Lee Anne, is an oncology nurse and reportedly the sharpest code-cracker in the house. They’ve blazed through 60 escape rooms and seek them out on family vacations. But to Brayden, games have truly been a way of life. At 4 years old, he’d instinctively rework games to make them his own. A few years later, he started to create them, from the aquatic puzzler Octopuz to Myft, a social-network parody that aims to reduce cyberbullying.
His newest title, Solisquare, is a puzzle-y twist on the classic solitaire. His dad designed the card art, but otherwise it’s entirely Brayden’s work. Brayden sees coding in his future, though maybe not as a career. “I always feel drawn to do more,” he says. “But I’m sure I’ll still make games for fun.” Whatever route he chooses, he’s got big plans—and a Homecoming date. She said yes.