Pixel Game Lab is the game design platform Game Design Academy® uses in its elementary school programs, now available at home. Kids draw their own pixel art, animate it, build levels with a story and publish a real game, with no coding. It is built for children: no chat, no ads, and a person reviews every game before anyone else can play it.
Not a game to play through, a game to make. Everything happens inside three tools, and every piece is your child's own.
A hero, enemies, a boss and a friend, drawn pixel by pixel with a 16-colour palette. A concept art sketchpad is built in for the first idea.
A walk, a jump, an attack and an idle, one frame at a time, with a live preview. This is how animation really works, and kids pick it up fast.
Worlds with ground, traps, coins and keys, plus characters the player talks to: dialog, quiz questions, trades and rewards that move the plot along.
The Game Package Tool puts the characters and levels together with a cover and a story. Your child submits it, a person reviews it, and it goes live in the Games Catalog where family and friends can play it.
Making a game from start to finish practises the skills schools care about most, and the ones you want for your child. Here is what that looks like in Pixel Game Lab.
Your child's game goes to the Games Catalog, a shared space with rules: be kind, make things other kids can play, and respect other people's work. A person reviews every game before it is public, and there is no chat.
Making a game is a team art. In a class, kids use each other's characters and tiles to build one game together, and friends can play a finished game side by side online. Everyone who helped is credited.
Your child asks the questions a designer asks: why did the player fall there, is this level too hard, what makes it fun? They test their own game, find what does not work and fix it.
Every character, animation, tile and level is drawn by your child. There are no templates to fill in, only a blank canvas, a 16-colour palette and their imagination.
Games tell stories. Your child writes the characters' words, the story and the description other players read, and explains their game to the people who play it, including you.
A game takes weeks, not minutes. Your child sticks with a project, improves it after feedback and finishes something they are proud of, published under their own name.
Pixel Game Lab follows COPPA and was designed for children and school networks from the first day. A child creates an account with a username only, never a real name or an email, and anything they publish goes to a person first.
Read our privacy policy for the details.
A username and a password, that is all. A child under 18 is set up as a Demo account and can connect a parent later.
The Learning Center inside the app has short tutorial videos and Pixo the Fox, who answers questions about the tools. Most kids make their first character in the first session.
Open the Games Catalog, play what your child made and what other kids made. Ask them to explain the story. That conversation is the point.
Start with a free Demo account, or play the games other kids have published in the Games Catalog.
Questions? Write to info@gamedesignacademy.com. Pixel Game Lab is made by Game Design Academy®, Carlstadt, New Jersey.
