We LOVE Adventure Time. We may have said this before. Luckily, our two sons love it too, or we’d have less excuse to watch it. And we think we (and they) are going to love the new Adventure Time mobile game too.
It’s called Adventure Time Game Wizard, and it launched this week for iOS and Android devices. Its big twist: you can draw – including using pens and paper – your own levels to play in it, and share with other players.
The basic game looks like a platform game, with your child running, leaping and battling as one of their favourite Adventure Time characters – from Finn and Jake to Ice King and Flame Princess. It stars a new villain: the Doodle Wizard.
But the real fun will come when they start to make their own levels. “Use the Doodle Wizard’s secret glyph language to design custom video games. Fill your games with traps, loot, portals, enemies, and so much more,” explains its app store listing.
“You can draw your games on paper and scan them in, or make mathematical levels directly in the app.”
Publisher Cartoon Network has provided a “starter kit” on its website, where you can download the sheets your children will need to draw the boxes that – once scanned by your device – will be turned into levels.
That includes placing coins, power-ups, lava, spikes, secret passages and spring launchers among other objects by using the “glyphs” – basically symbols drawn onto the paper along with the scenery.
Meanwhile, an in-game Arcade lets children share their games with the world, and download those made by other kids. That’s an important point: even if your children don’t enjoy the creative part of Adventure Time Game Wizard, they’ll be able to enjoy the designs of those who do.
We think it’s a marvellous idea, and cannot confirm or deny the suggestion that we might be designing a few levels ourselves. In fact, that’s another fun aspect of this: for younger Adventure Time fans, making levels with their parents might be extra fun.
Adventure Time Game Wizard costs £3.99 for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, and £3.29 for Android devices from the Google Play store.
Hats off, by the way, to developer Pixel Press. It worked with Cartoon Network on the game, which uses its technology. We can recommend checking out its existing app Floors for a non-Adventure-Time take on the ‘draw your own game’ idea.
• More Adventure Time apps for kids on Apps Playground