Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time is one of their most successful series, and they’ve made tons of video games based on the property (believe me; I’ve reviewed a lot of them).  Their newest title, Game Wizard, is one of the most creative I’ve played yet!  One day, Finn and Jake are walking through the forest when they come across a magic book and pencil surrounded by all sorts of strange runes.  When they use the pencil to draw themselves in the book, their sketches come to life and they go on an adventure to stop the Doodle Wizard.  And now you can draw your own adventures, too, as the game lets you draw levels using graph paper and scan them into your tablet!  Adventure Time: Game Wizard is available for iOS, Google Play, and Amazon, but reviewed on iPad here.

The main game is a 2-D platform jumping adventure, and kind of reminds me of Metroid in how you move about.  You start out as a sketch of Finn but can unlock other characters later.  Each character has his or her own special set of skills.  Finn’s sword is powerful and can cut through certain blocks.  Jake can use his stretchy punch to grab onto walls or reach far away pickups.  The Ice King can shoot freezing projectiles and can fly for a short while using his beard.  The Fire Princess can shoot fireballs and walk on lava.  And finally, my favorite Adventure Time character, BMO, is finally playable in an Adventure Time game and he can fit into small spaces and shoot rapid fire pixels.  There are other unlockable characters just are just marked “coming soon.”  I can tell one of them is the rock n roll vampire girl Marcelene, but I don’t know who the other one is!

Anyway, as you play the main game, you’ll collect all sorts of useful items.  Pies help replenish your health, and coins let you buy things in the shop, like upgrades for your characters and new items to use in the game’s creation mode (more on that later).  Keys help you unlock doors, and Princess Bubblegum draws power-ups for you, like bombs and candy corn projectile weapons.  But be careful, as the Doodle Wizard has drawn all sorts of enemies for you to fight, as well as bosses every now and then.  Luckily, checkpoints are plentiful and you can warp to any one you’ve passed, making backtracking a breeze.

And when you’re done with the main quest, you can make your own 2-D adventures in the Create mode.  They included an in-game creation mode where you use the touch screen and tap and drag platforms, items, enemies, and other things into the stages, and it’s really easy and fun to use.  They have good tutorials, too.  You can also print off special sheets of graph paper from the Game Wizard web site and draw your levels using special symbols.  Then you can scan your drawings into your tablet using the camera.  Unfortunately, this way of creating levels didn’t work out for me.  My iPad would either freeze up, or not read what I drew correctly, so you probably have to be very accurate.  Of course, I could’ve also made a level that was too complicated (I was trying to make a Pac-Man maze).  So while drawing levels is a good idea, the in-game creation tools are much better.  You can also upload your creations and share them with others, and play other people’s creations in the Arcade mode.

The only other problems I had with this game besides the drawing part of creation mode is that the game uses touch screen controls to move your characters around, and it’s not always responsive.  Plus, sometimes the game can freeze up for a second, and enemies can get stuck inside walls and other silly bugs.  But otherwise it’s a pretty fun 2-D romp that Adventure Time fans will want to check out anyway.

Kid Factor:

While you do hit enemies like skeletons and bananas with swords, punches, and fireballs, enemies just disappear in a puff of smoke.  And since everything is just drawings anyway, nobody really gets hurt.  Younger gamers may get frustrated with the touch screen controls, and the drawing tools in creation mode that don’t always work.  Reading skill is helpful for some of the text, especially in the more complicated Creation mode, but most of the game is fully voiced by the cartoon’s cast.  Luckily it looks like there aren’t any in-game purchases, even though it seems that way.  You buy everything with coins you earn from the game.  Parental supervision is recommended for logging in to upload levels and play others, but Cartoon Network is pretty good about keeping their games safe for kids.

Tags: Game Reviews, Television