A 16 year-old boy has designed a new ‘Covid Invaders’ arcade game to encourage people to get vaccinated. Josh Ternyak’s simple game – based on the 1978 classic Space Invaders – sees players pilot a syringe, and shoot squirts of the preventative injection at Covid particles.

Josh, from Plymouth in Minnesota, said: ‘I wanted to build something that was unbiased and not offend anyone and help make people laugh.’ His site features a ‘Did you know’ factbox on its top-right corner, saying: ‘People who have gotten sick with Covid-19 may still benefit from being vaccinated.’

The retro game, whose rounds last 30 seconds, sees players confronted with red spiked Covid particles, some of which wear masks, while others do not.

Josh and friend Roman Peysakovich spent two months designing the game, and spent $10 buying the domain name covidinvaders.com so he could share his work with the world. The game can be played on desktop computers, or a smartphone.

Josh even soundtracked the game with a self-penned rap he recorded in 10 minutes, using a free beat he found online. Players can type their initials at the end of the game, and see where they have been placed on a leader board of Covid killers.

The Grand Forks Herald reported that Josh began learning computer programing at 11, before teaching himself coding aged 13, through a mixture of YouTube tutorials, and paid courses.

Real-life Covid has forced Josh to attend virtual lessons from home for the last nine months. But the teenager says being at home has made him more productive, and allowed him more time to code at night.

He said: ‘What I learned, if you have something really interesting and engaging to do like building a website or a game, you’re not going to need to get dopamine from Snapchat or Instagram.’

The United States has now recorded over 20.6million Covid inections, and more than 351,000 deaths.

Two vaccines have so-far been approved for use, but just 1.5million Americans have received the shot – far short of the 20million people officials hoped to have inoculated by the end of 2020.

To play Covid Invaders click here

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