Twenty six-year-old woman who doesn’t code creates Asia’s hottest game

A Hit-Point Co. game app Tabi Kaeru, or Travel Frog, is arranged for a photograph on a smartphone in Tokyo, Japan, on Monday, Jan. 30, 2018. The game became the No. 1 downloaded smartphone app in China for almost two weeks after its debut, and is still hovering at the top of the charts in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan. Photographer: Kentaro Takahashi/Bloomberg

Japanese frogs are proliferating across Asia. The good news is, they’re not an invasive species, nor are they real. 

Tabi Kaeru, or Travel Frog, became the No. 1 downloaded smartphone app in China for almost two weeks after its debut, and is still hovering at the top of the charts in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan. The idea for the game came from Mayuko Uemura, a 26-year-old employee of developer Hit-Point Inc who has never written a line of computer code.