What you can buildGames
2D games
Build a 2D game and draw its characters, backgrounds and items, its levels and their look.
A 2D game plays from the first build. Until its characters are drawn, they are silhouettes with the same size and the same timing, so you can play it and judge it before anything is spent on art.
When you are ready, open Game art with the button over the preview. It opens beside the game, with one card for each character, background and item. How the panel itself works, with its tabs, sounds, settings and high scores, is on Game art.
Characters
- Read the description first. It says how the character looks. Change it with the pencil before anything is drawn: it costs nothing.
- See the character. Draw with AI draws it once, so you can look at it before going further. Not quite right? Change the description, or Try another.
- Draw the poses. Only when you like it: every move the game needs is drawn from that one character, so it stays the same person in all of them. It takes about two minutes, and the card counts the poses as they are drawn.
Each button shows its price in credits before you press it. Drawing a character is on the paid plans. Backgrounds and items can be drawn on every plan, and drawing your own is free.
The moves depend on the kind of game: a fighter punches, kicks, blocks and falls; a gunner runs, shoots, crouches and jumps; a platform hero and a top-down hero have their own.
Backgrounds and items
Stages and the things in them, like crates, barrels or a medkit, are drawn the same way, from their description.
Describing it
A few words are enough, in any language. When you press Draw with AI, AI reads the description, keeps everything you wrote and fills in only what is missing, like the clothes, the colours or the shape. A description that already says it all is only translated.
Under the card, Drawn as shows what it was drawn from. If something was added that you do not want, say so in the description, for example "no scarf", and draw it again. Try another draws from the same reading, so only the drawing changes.
Reading the description is part of the drawing's price.
The look
The menu at the top of Game art sets one look for every character and background. Changing it later draws again what AI drew, at its price; see The look.
| Look | What it is like |
|---|---|
| HD painted | Hand-painted art with bold outlines, like a 90s arcade game redrawn in HD. |
| Pixel art | The 16-bit look: crisp pixels, few colours. |
| Digitized actor | Real actors in costume, photographed like the arcade fighting games of the 1990s. |
Simple classics
A snake, a Tetris, a memory game or a quiz has no characters, so it is finished from the first build in its own colours and shapes. So is any other 2D game asked for without characters to animate: a breakout, a flappy bird, chess, noughts and crosses, or a game you make up. Game art opens from the button over the preview and holds three things:
- Backgrounds: the picture behind the board or the play area.
- Objects: the things in the game, like a snake's food, the faces of a memory game's cards or the pieces of a chess set.
- Sounds: the game's sounds and music from Setherion's library, free to change. See Sounds.
A picture you draw with AI or upload takes the place of the game's own drawing as soon as it is ready. Until then nothing changes, so there is nothing you have to do before you publish. The looks on offer are HD painted and Pixel art.
Draw the levels
A platformer or a top-down game keeps its levels in Game art, under Levels. Each level is a plan of cells: pick what to paint, like ground, a platform, a coin or a door, and press and drag across the plan. Right-click erases. Wider, Narrower, Taller and Shorter change its size, + Add a level starts a new one from a copy, and clicking a level's name renames it.
Nothing changes in the game until Save level. Saving takes no credits, and the game starts again with the level as you drew it. The look of the cells comes from Level look, below.
A game built before levels could be drawn keeps them in its code. Its Levels tab has Ask in the chat, which starts the request to move them here, once.
Level look
Level look is how a level's ground, platforms, ladders, water and doors are drawn. Each look is shown as a level drawn in it, and they come from a free library:
| Game | Looks |
|---|---|
| A platformer | Cartoon meadow, Cartoon desert, Cartoon snow, Cartoon castle, Pixel meadow, Pixel desert, Pixel snow |
| A top-down game | Village, Dungeon |
Press Use this look on one. It is free, and the game draws its levels in it at once. The one in use says In use.
A game that still draws its levels with plain shapes says so, and Use in game writes the request to use the look in the chat box for you to check and send.
Pick something in the game
Turn on Edit above the preview and click a character, an object, the background or a piece of a level right in the game. It is framed, and a bar over it holds:
- Game art, which opens the card for that character, object or background, to draw it or upload your own.
- Edit level, for a piece of a level, which opens that level under Levels with the piece marked.
- Ask AI, which puts it in the chat as the thing your next message is about. Write "make this enemy faster" or "remove this platform", and the change is made to exactly that one. For a piece of a level, the chat is told its row and column too.
While Edit is on, a single click picks and does not reach the game. Double-click to press something in the game, like its start button.
Drawing your own
Every card also takes your own drawing, free. Drawing your own? at the foot of Game art has a guide, a blank grid with every pose in its place and a finished example. Draw on it in any app and Upload it on the card.
To fix only one pose of a drawn character, open its poses and Download on the template, retouch it, then Replace on the card.
Uploading confirms the drawings are yours, or that you have the right to use them.
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