GDC: Sketch Nation Shooter - Hands On

By Matt Dunn, USA
for www.touchgen.com

Published: March 10, 2010

commentComment        

GDC: Sketch Nation Shooter - Hands On thumbnail

If you can draw it, you can shoot it!I am quite excited to be able to speak openly about Sketch Nation Shooter to you all. This is a game that I was fortunate enough to catch over a year ago at a summit in San Francisco, but couldn’t say a word about! It was the most unique game at the show then, and now, a year later, is filled with more awesome than ever. It was painful to hold back my gushing on the podcast, but now I can gush all I want! (ew)

SNS is a game completely built on user-created content from the ground up. It is, at heart, a top-down space shooting game. You control your ship, which fires at oncoming baddies while dodging objects. There are, of course, power ups, large bosses, and the like. What makes this game ground breaking is the fact that everything, and I mean everything in the game can be manipulated by the user - literally, to the point of making it a completely different game.

How does it work? It starts with a simple sketch or drawing on a piece of white paper. You take a picture using the iPhone camera, the game processes the images, and presto! You now have your ship/enemy/boss/background/etc etc. So literally, if you can draw it, even a half-assed piece of crap like Dave would use, you can use it in the game. Obviously, the first thing that comes to my mind is an epic of “Dave verses the monster cocks” or something like that. Fortunately for everyone else, this probably wouldn’t be accepted in the games slick online game repository.

You can link up with friends from Facebook, download their games, or see how they’re doing on your levels. With online support, and an extremely robust level/campaign/object creation system, Sketch Nation Shooter has literally endless replayablilty.We saw a side-scrolling underwater game, a dodge-the-cars driving game, and of course, plenty of space shooting game action. The sound track features some great music from what I heard, which is just an added bonus.

Check out the video below for an example of how easy it is to create a quick level using your own drawings in less than two minutes. Keep in mind, there are literally thousands of deviations of these options when you use an advanced customization.

I can’t wait to get my hands on this game.



  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon
  • Share/Bookmark

Remember to follow us on Twitter @TouchGEN

Review disclosure: Any games reviewed on this page may have been provided to us by the developer for the purposes of this review. Note: the resulting review score is never impeded by this fact, all opinions are that of the TouchGen reviewer and not the developer. This is in keeping with our O.A.T.S oath. Read more about O.A.T.S here

iPGN comments

5 Comments on "GDC: Sketch Nation Shooter - Hands On"

  1. Nitzan Wilnai on Wed, 10th Mar 2010 4:38 am 

    Thanks for the chance to show off the game. :)

  2. Josh on Wed, 10th Mar 2010 4:49 am 

    Love it. This is one of those genius ideas. Take pictures of stuff and put it into games! Can’t wait.

  3. legend.inc on Wed, 10th Mar 2010 6:00 am 

    OMG!! i love art so i am going to LOVE this!! can’t wait…

  4. legend.inc on Wed, 10th Mar 2010 6:09 am 

    By the way, can people with ipods use the pics from their photos or is it only compatible with iphones?

  5. Nitzan Wilnai on Wed, 10th Mar 2010 6:34 am 

    You can use images from your photo library.

    The game will also ship with several art packs so you can start creating games immediately.




touchgen_234_4501

Related articles

Latest articles