Ah, Halloween. Who doesn't love carving those iconic gourds, the jack-o'-lantern? But then again, who enjoys jamming their arm in up to the elbow and scooping out those sticky, gooey guts? Well, in this game, you can carve your pumpkin without the mess, and with the added benefit that these masterpieces won't ever rot or end up out in the street in a thousand pieces.
Carve It! was originally conceived as a fun activity for an online consumer magazine, but has since evolved into full-featured apps for Android OS and Apple iOS tablets and phones. Using their finger or a stylus, users can "carve" away the pumpkin's skin revealing the insides, or draw on the pumpkin's skin with the full rainbow of colors. They can choose from a wide variety of shapes to carve and draw with. Using the mode menu, they can switch between carving and uncarving, drawing and erasing. With the size slider, they can quickly change the size of the carving/drawing shape. And, when they are all done they can save their finished pumpkins as a JPEG images to the Android or iOS photo galleries.
Carve It! apps are available in a paid version, and a limited free version that has some features disabled. View Carve It! on the Google Play Store here: paid version, free version.
The online version, created with HTML5 canvas and JavaScript, sports a simplified interface where users can name their pumpkins and save them to an online gallery. Visitors to Rombots.com can go to the gallery and view all the pumpkins that have been created by others. When a user chooses to save a pumpkin, Carve It! Online sends a JPEG compressed copy of the carved canvas to a waiting PHP script that gives it a file name and saves it to the server. The script also records the file info to a MySQL database, and generates a thumbnail image of the pumpkin for use in the gallery. The gallery pages are created dynamically from all the entries in the database.
To protect against the inevitable, misuse/abuse of the gallery, for each pumpkin that is saved, the PHP script also sends an email to an administrator which contains links to view the pumpkin, and instantly block the pumpkin from being viewed in the gallery, if the administrator deems it inappropriate.
Try your hand at pumpkin carving by going to http://www.rombots.com/carveit.php.