Doodle Jump scores 10 million mobile downloads for two brothers

Doodle Jump, an enormously popular game on the iPhone built by two brothers in New York, has been downloaded more than 10 million times across the iPhone, iPad, and Android mobile devices.

That’s quite an achievement, but one that is becoming more and more common in the age of mobile apps. Indie developers who were virtually unknown are now becoming famous and fabulously wealthy because they created a game that resonated with millions of mobile users.

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The company isn’t sitting still. In January, it announced a marketing deal with Universal Pictures, which plans to cross-promote the app in promotions for its upcoming live action and computer-animated comedy, Hop.

Doodle Jump comes from humble indie roots. Croatian immigrants Igor Pusenjak and his brother Marko (their company is called Lima Sky) created the app two years ago, and it has become a sensation, particularly in my household. Igor got the idea for it and sketched the game on a pad in his living room. Marko did the programming.

Lima Sky says it will soon launch multiplayer gaming for iOS (Apple iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad and iPad 2 devices), Doodle Jump on the iPad, a Doodle Jump line of toys, a Doodle Jump comic book, and a Doodle Jump game for the Kinect motion-gaming system on the Xbox 360 video game console. In all of these extensions of the Doodle Jump brand, Lima Sky is pursuing the same kind of strategy as Rovio, which has had 100 million downloads of its Angry Birds mobile game.

In the movie deal, Lima Sky let its Doodle Jump users unlock a secret Easter level within the game and play as the film’s leading character. Hop is the second film from Universal Pictures and filmmaker Chris Meledandri, producer of Despicable Me, at Illumination Entertainment. The film, which features Russell Brand as the Easter Bunny, will be released on April 1.

In Doodle Jump, players guide Doodle the Doodler on a journey up a sheet of graph paper, using the tilt controls of the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. Since its release, the game has risen into the cultural stratosphere, getting plenty of play and mentions from the likes of Jimmy Fallon, The Big Bang Theory, Rainn Wilson, the Jonas Brothers and others. Lima Sky was founded in July 2008.

In my panel at the recent Digital Life Design conference in Munich, Igor Pusenjak said the game has stayed popular thanks to frequent content updates. The company has also licensed the game to GameHouse, which has published it on Android phones.