App of the Week: Sketch Nation Shooter

DIY doodle shooter turns scribbles into your favorite new video game

Just when you thought paper and pencil were as irrelevant as The Tonight Show, along comes Sketch Nation Shooter—the next step in the evolution of drawing, and possibly the most ingenious iTunes app ever conceived.

The 99-cent download allows you to custom build your own video games, quite literally from scratch. Sketch your player—a stick figure, a rocket ship, whatever—snap a photo with your iPhone cam (or import from your photo library on iPod Touch and iPad), then import it into the app. Draw enemies, bosses and environments to stick your player into and import them too. Let Sketch Nation randomly generate a game from your custom assets, or design up to four levels on your own. Sound impossible? Peep the demo footage for proof.

Once your game is complete you can draw your own title screen then upload it to the Sketch Nation network to share with your fellow pixel Picassos. But hurry up, because it’s only a matter of time before someone else corners the market on the Attack of the Mutant Genitalia franchise.

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