New Zealander develops mobile game from near-death experience

Major, an avid gamer, modeled his game on the successes of titles such as Flappy Bird and Temple Run, with their sole objective of achieving high scores. Plummet lets users assume a cartoon version of Mark as he "plummets" down an endless shaft, tilting the phone left and right to avoid obstacles and continue falling.

With no coding or design skills, Major resorted to online marketplaces for sourcing designers and coders. Eventually, he chose a Romanian engineer to create the game.

The whole process from concept to creation took two months and cost $3,000.

Major hopes the success of Plummet would make his venture a viable full time occupation, adding that with its "China connection" he would love for the game to gain a large following in the country's growing mobile gaming market.

"China has such a booming mobile market with great companies, such as Tencent Holdings Ltd. It would be fantastic to achieve a top-selling game in the fastest growing market in the world," says Major.

The size of China's mobile gaming market reached 7.27 billion yuan ($1.17 billion) by the third quarter of 2014, growing 9.2 percent quarter-on-quarter, according to EnfoDesk Analysys International.