Who says that development is limited to the young and fresh faced populous of college towns? In just a year, Silicon Valley-based Naomi Kokubo coded her own game and had it published in a multitude of mobile app stores. The mom of two grew tired of dealing with design engineers and jumping through hoops to get the design process going, so she took her business expertise with her and set out to study a programming language to get an app into the iTunes App Store on her very own.

"I didn't even know how APIs really worked," she wrote in an email. "I used to blank out when anyone talked tech to me. I'd worked in the game business, but I was never one to code."

A year ago, Kokubo stumbled upon the Corona SDK, a mobile development framework used to create apps for various mobile platforms. After perusing the documentation, she began fooling around with sample code until she could decide what kind of game she wanted to make. "I bought the book on LUA [the programming language that the Corona SDK utilizes] and I tried to read it, but I failed. I'm sure if I read it now I can take a lot from it, but when you really don't know what you're doing, it's hard," she laments. To help grasp the coding language, she took sample codes and experimented with them, line by line, until she understood each function the codes were performing.

"The thing that helped me the most was the community," Kokubo wrote of her experience. "As soon as I plugged into the forums, I felt connected, and I began to suck up knowledge. Wheever I got stuck, someone always posted something that helped me get over the hurdles."

Kokubo then set out to develop her very own game called Beetle Bounce, a bumper-style game that incorporates different arcade-style elements and works with Game Center to rack up achievements. The framework for the game came from the sample code belonging to a digital version of pool, and soon evolved into the full-blown app that LavaMind eventually picked up to publish. "There's no better way than to code it yourself," she says.

"Initially, I started with Apple iOS devices," adds Kokubo in a phone interview. "I use a Mac and I think that iOS apps have better revenue services…and better distribution if you reach the right audience. And I just think Apple products are really fun."

Kokubo is currently at work on her next game, which she hopes will present her with new challenges, including incorporating network requests into her app development. "I would like to challenge myself to work with networks requests where you can play with friends or other opponents elsewhere."

If you'd like to give Beetle Bounce a try, you can download the free app for iPhone or iPad in the iTunes App Store [iTunes link].