St. Louis-based App Store developers, Pixel Press, have recently announced the launch of their first title in the draw-your-own-game series called Pixel Press Floors, which lets users create side-scrolling platformers with coins, fire pits, spikes, and much more. By using Pixel Press Floors, anyone can draw and share their games with other users that required no coding experience at all. All you need is the corresponding sketch guide, a pencil, and the app itself to create your own game. Best of all it’s a simple four-step process — draw your levels, capture and test, design, then play and share. If you aren’t much of a drawer, you can create your own game right away within the app.

Right now the developer’s website is down for unknown reasons, however, from what we were told this is how Pixel Press Floors works:

Users begin by downloading the free sketch guide from the company’s website. The guide details the different shapes (“glyphs”) that can be translated into game elements. For example, a coin is drawn as a plus sign, simple boxes are terrain, and an equal sign can mark where the player will start in the level. Once the game is drawn, the user holds the iPad parallel to the sheet of paper so that Floors can capture the drawing; as soon as it recognizes the grid paper, it automatically takes the picture and turns it into a playable video game level. From there, the user can customize the design/gameplay of the game and playtest it before submitting it to the Pixel Press community (the Arcade). It is also possible to download the app and just enjoy playing levels uploaded by other users. The Pixel Press Arcade allows everyone to “like” levels, and it also displays the number of times a level has been played.

In addition, the Pixel Press team have been working with GCAA Makerspace for the last few months to incorporate Pixel Press Floors into Stanford’s Design Thinking Process. That being said, eventually it would be really cool to see this implemented in some elementary schools to hopefully spark creativity within classrooms all across the world. Because iPads are becoming more wide spread in schools here in the recent years, this would make an excellent combination in the near future. For those interested, you can download Pixel Press Floors for free on the App Store by clicking here, however, there are in-app purchases to unlock additional content for levels.