Canterbury student Benjamin Lawrence was one of 350 global winners WWDC25 Swift Student Challenge. Photo / George Heard
Canterbury student Benjamin Lawrence was one of 350 global winners WWDC25 Swift Student Challenge. Photo / George Heard
Apple has named winners of two global app competitions in the buildup to its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this week – and the lineup includes several Kiwis.
Christchurch-based Black Salt Games’ Dredge, billed as a “Sinister fishing adventure”, was one of 12 winners in the AppleDesign Awards, which honour stand-out apps and games made by independent developers.
The winner in the Interaction category, Dredge ($22.99) is described as “a slow-burn horror game with exploration and adventure offering seamless interactions and a fun world of hidden treasures across iPhone, iPad and Mac”.
From left: Black Salt Games' co-founder and chief executive Nadia Thorne, 3D artist Michael Bastiaens, creative director Alex Ritchie and programmer Joel Mason.
Black Salt was started during the pandemic by its chief executive Nadia Thorne, 3D artist Michael Batiaens, creative director Alex Ritchie and programmer Joel Mason.
All three were working at CerebralFix – a large Christchurch gaming, VR and immersive installation firm that has done work for the likes of Pixar, Disney and Weta – before deciding to take a risk by founding an indie studio.
Following two years of development work, Dredge was released in 2023, initially for PCs and Nintendo Switch. Earlier this year, iOS and (whisper it) Android versions were released.
Earlier, the team said that while games are often developed by large teams with dozens or even hundreds of staff, Black Salt’s small size had unique benefits.
“We get to move pretty quickly, like if we want to change direction or try something new,” Ritchie said.
Mason said it was not easy splitting an entire project between just four people. “The challenge is how much we can achieve with the hours we have in the day,” he said.
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There were two local winners in the WWDC25 Swift Student Challenge, a global coding competition that attracted thousands of entries from high school pupils around the world:
Ben Lawrence, a 16-year-old student at Kaiapoi High School who was a first-timer winner for a financial literacy app called Good Cents. It’s on the App Store now; and
Alex Liang, a student at Auckland’s Westlake Boys High School for his Make A Wish app, which uses AI to predict meteor showers then photograph them without the need for an expensive meteor camera. It was the second win in a row for the 16-year-old. It’s due to appear on the AppStore on June 10 as WWDC 2025 kicks off.
Lawrence said while he’s taken digital technologies for NCEA, all of his app development is self-taught.
In primary school, he got involved with a First Lego League robotics team. Midway through last year, he started using Apple’s Swift – a beginner-friendly programming language for creating apps.
His first app was Grizzco Handbook – a companion app offering advice for players of the Nintendo Switch game Splatoon.
He said he started to develop his second, Good Cents, after seeing how people in New Zealand are struggling financially. It gamifies the process of learning how to budget and manage money. If you do well, you can land a job then earn promotions.
Lawrence also joined forces with his dad – a software engineer at Spark to create Travvl, a website for managing your itinerary for a trip. He’s now working on a mobile version.
Look for more from this Swifty, who plans to make a career of app development. “It’s become my passion,” he says.
Westlake Boys' High School student Alex Laing pictured in 2024 at the Takapuna library where he did a lot of his app development work after school. Photo / Alex Burton
Liang said his mission is to create an accessible and well-designed app which gives users access to meteor predictions without the need for internet connection.
Make A Wish is designed to simplify capturing meteors on camera, transforming the process from ordering and installing multi-thousand-dollar cameras to clicking a button on an iPhone.
Alex was a Swift Student Winner in 2024 with Little Planets, an app he developed when he was 15 and was released onto the App Store last year. New Zealand’s Global Meteor Network invited Alex to deliver an online lecture about the app at their annual meeting in early February 2025. This is where he was asked by meteor scientists to develop Make A Wish.
Apple selected 350 Swift Student Challenge winners whose submissions demonstrate excellence in innovation, creativity, social impact or inclusivity, the company said.
All winners receive one year of membership in the Apple Developer Programme, a complimentary voucher to take an App Development with Swift certification exam, a certificate from Apple and AirPods Max.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
