Children's tech This article is more than 9 years oldAdventure Time: new mobile game gets kids to create their own levels
This article is more than 9 years oldGame Wizard app encourages children to draw and share their ideas using either the touchscreen or pens and paper
Adventure Time has been a hit as a TV show and as a series of mobile games, but its latest interactive spin-off wants to get children creating as well as playing.
Released for iOS and Android devices, Adventure Time Game Wizard is a platform game featuring Finn, Jake and several other stars of the Cartoon Network show, which has stretched over six series since its debut in 2010, with a seventh to come.
However, the heart of the new game is its “Create” mode, where children can make their own levels using a digital editor within the app, or by drawing scenery and items on paper then scanning their levels in using their device’s camera.
Cartoon Network worked with mobile developer Pixel Press on the app, building on technology previously used for the latter company’s Pixel Press Floors app, which launched for iOS in April 2014.
The Adventure Time version’s pen-and-paper aspect involves downloading and printing out a “starter kit” of worksheets, with gridlines to help children plan blocky 2D scenery for their levels, before using “glyphs” to indicate features like lava, moving platforms, coins and power-ups.
Once created, levels can be shared via the in-game “Arcade” for other players to download and play. Cartoon Network is charging £3.99 upfront for the game with no in-app purchases. It’s the latest mobile game based on the show, following Card Wars, Ski Safari, Treasure Fetch and Time Tangle.
Game Wizard – and before it Pixel Press Floors – are part of a small but growing number of apps that aim to blend digital play with real-world creativity, however.
Other examples include SquiggleFish, where children draw and scan in sea creatures for a virtual aquarium; Foldify Zoo, where kids create animals on-screen, then print them out as papercraft versions to colour in; Drawnimal, which provides animated faces for animals that children draw on paper; and colAR Mix, which turns coloured-in printable pictures into 3D animations.
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