Wumpy. What is it? An animal? A nickname? Well according to Andrew Sawyer it refers to your stomach. “Wump” went from an inside joke with fellow classmates Kenneth and Briggs to an addictive new app. 

Andrew Sawyer is a Pisgah alumni who recently debuted his second app: Wumpy. In this game, the goal is to get the Wumpy character as perfectly in line with his outline as possible. 

Sawyer is currently a freshman at Auburn University majoring in Industrial Design. Though this major is not directly related to coding, Sawyer loves having the opportunity to express his creativity in class as well as at Auburn Community Church. 

He works with a team to design social media videos and advertisements as well as making video presentation content for the church. 

His inspiration came from the time when he and his friend were competing to pause a stopwatch the fastest. He recalls that they got very caught up in the game and were shocked at how addicting, simple, and fun it was. 

Sawyer took a mobile app development class his junior year at Mount Pisgah, and thanks to Ambrey McWilliams, physics and computer science instructor, as well as the Apple book ‘Intro to App Development with Swift,’ he was well equipped to create Wumpy. 

Sawyer enjoyed the class because McWilliams “let the class have open project ideas, work on what they choose, and learn their own style;” this exploratory forum taught him the basics of app-making and helped him transform his ideas into an actual product. 

It was during this class when Sawyer made his first app called ‘BLinK’ which combines camera roll photos with an audio track selected by the user. He called this “the fast and lower quality way to edit videos.”  After completing BLink he wanted to take a different approach to the next application he wanted to make. 

This motivated Sawyer to make Wumpy and even though the app has a goofy name, it was a serious task to accomplish. 

According to Sawyer, the hardest part was “making an equation that [he] thought was complicated but with trial and error was actually easier to do.” He expected to spend one hour creating the equation for the ‘Go Wumpy!’ button; in actuality, it took four hours to complete. 

The animated, energetic character in the game is what Sawyer views as an ideal “wump.” The character has a small body and legs in comparison to his oversized stomach. 

When deciding the background, Sawyer wanted something that was not distracting in consideration of those playing. He decided on fun simple rainbow colors, and for the music, he found a track online that perfectly fit his vision.

This app was published in December of 2019 and Sawyer is already hard at work to create an update. The app is available on the Apple App Store for download. Just a heads up from the creator himself: It is easy to get addicted attempting to stop Wumpy perfectly in his outline!