When Cartoon Network / Adult Swim was on the schedule at PAX Prime, I was surprised to say the least, and swapped my hardware appointment for it. I was curious to see what shenanigans the dynamic duo Bill and Garrett were up to, to schedule kid’s games to be previewed.
Adventure Time – Game Wizard is an open world action platformer for your favorite Adventure Time characters, Finn and Jake, and their friends. What’s additionally nifty about the game is that it’s not just a open world platformer (more nifty that the linear platformers that so many kids games are) it uses Pixel Press’s capture technology in the game editor.
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There are two versions of the game editor. The in-game editor using touch and draw, drag and drop to create maps, traps, monsters and treasure chests; and the out of game using ruler, pencil and pads of special graph paper. Using the same symbols, you can draw complex dungeons and piece them all together to create one humongous dungeon. Then you import the entire thing into the game by taking a picture of it with your mobile device’s camera.
I had a little hands on time and saw just how easy it was to create a simple level. A few lines here to show walls, landscape, spawn points for your character, monsters and a treasure chest! I had to ask.
“Can a kid put in limitless treasure chests?”
“No.”
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The short and simple answer! The game is still in a beta stage so I’m sure there will be plenty of tweaks for balance and risk vs. reward. There’s of course also the regular story game that lets you unlock seven different characters with different abilities, any which can be used in your own user designed dungeons – after you’ve unlocked them. There are also plans for sharing maps and talk of advanced creator tools that we could not see in the early version shown on the floor.
Adventure Time: Game Wizard will be available at the end of 2014 on iOS, Android and the Kindle Fire. But if you can’t wait, check out Cartoon Network’s web based game creators – they have one available for almost every show in their network.
