Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Imagine that you could draw your plans for a video game on a sheet of graph paper, take a photo of your drawing, email it off to a website, and then receive a working copy of that very game—for free.
That particular fantasy is reality at Pixel Press (projectpixelpress.com), a St. Louis startup that’s attracting significant buzz. Lifelong gamer and company founder Robin Rath came up with the unique concept by reflecting on his childhood. Rath got so into Super Mario Bros. as a kid that he started drawing his own “levels” on paper. As an adult, Rath idly wondered what it would take to turn such drawings into a working video game.
His idea garnered national press, and gamers far and wide contributed so much money to the successful Pixel Press Kickstarter campaign that it made more than $100,000 in 37 days. “We went from not knowing what to expect to the idea really resonating with a broad audience,” he says.
Rath’s company, now seven employees strong, plans to release the iOS app this quarter, with an Android version to come midyear. (“It’s very likely that it will be free to create your own game, but $5 to $10 to try other people’s games,” Rath says.) Exactly how it works is a matter for the computer programmers, but suffice it to say that gamers draw designated lines and shapes, and visual-recognition software translates them into game features.
“The magic of it is, there is no coding necessary for the user,” Rath says. “We’re extracting that piece from the puzzle.”
Pixel Press is already working on the next phases of the enterprise. “Now that we’ve done a linear run-and-jump platform game, we’re working on letting users draw adventure games on an x- and a y-axis, like Metroid or Castlevania or Zelda,” he says. “We’ve also done a Pac-Man–style game, which is technically called ‘maze navigation.’ We’d like to do racing and puzzle games, and tower-defense games, too.”
The games are “geared toward 8- to 12-year-olds,” Rath says. “However, the 24- to 35-year-olds played these games growing up, so they’ll enjoy the nostalgia, and they may have their own kids who’ll enjoy them, too. When an 8-year-old creates a level that challenges his dad, that’s an amazing experience.”
