Do I need to know how to draw to make a game?

Can you make a game without knowing how to draw?

Yes. If you don't draw, you have four paths: use simple shapes, use ready-made art, ask the AI for the images, or team up with someone who draws. None of them requires you to pick up a pencil.

Our take, based on the cases and rules cited below.

Drawing, by the way, was never the biggest problem. The hard part, on all four paths, is making the whole game look the same from start to finish (our take).

What famous game has simple art?

The best-known example is Thomas Was Alone, a platform jumping game in which the characters are colored rectangles¹.

In October 2010, Mike Bithell was working at a game company, Blitz Games, and decided to do a 24-hour marathon making a game on his own. The result was a first version for the web browser. Later, by then the lead game designer at another studio, Bossa, in London, he made the full version outside work hours, with his employer's approval. The game came out for computers in June 2012¹.

How it plays: each rectangle has a power, like jumping high or floating on water, and you combine the powers to get each one to the exit. A narrator tells what each rectangle is thinking, and that is where the player gets attached to them. The narration, by Briton Danny Wallace, won the performance award at the BAFTA Games Awards, the British awards, and the music is by David Housden¹.

By April 2014, the game had passed 1 million copies, according to its creator, not counting the free downloads given to PlayStation subscribers¹.

Two details matter here. The creator was not a layman: he worked in games. And the game was not just rectangles: it had a script, a narrator, and music made by professionals. The simple art left room for everything else to shine (our take).

There are other well-known cases, each on a different path:

• Vampire Survivors, released in 2021, used bought, ready-made art. Its creator spent about £1,100 on art, music, and sound, according to Vice, and one of the packs had characters that looked like the ones in the first Castlevania games².
• Undertale, a simple pixel art game released in 2015, was made almost entirely by Toby Fox, who wrote the script and composed the music. Most of the art was done by an artist, Temmie Chang³.

These are rare hits, picked because they are well known. For each of them, there are thousands of games with simple art that almost nobody played.

Where can you find free, ready-made art for a game?

There are large libraries, some cleared even for games you sell. The three most often mentioned are Kenney, OpenGameArt, and the itch.io art section.

• Kenney, a game art studio, puts the art on its pages in the public domain, under the license called CC0. It can be used even in commercial projects, and credit is not required. The only written restriction is using the studio's logo⁴.
• OpenGameArt is a site where artists share art for games. Each item comes with a different license, and the site itself explains what each one asks for⁵.
• itch.io, a store for independent games, has a section just for game art, with characters, backgrounds, and sounds. On October 14, 2026, it listed 122,165 items, with filters for free, paid, and on sale⁶.

Pack art solves the problem of not being able to draw, but it creates another one: the same pack is in many games. Mixing packs from different artists also tends to produce a game that looks like a collage (our take).

What does the license of an art pack mean?

The license is the usage rule the artist chose. It says whether you can sell the game with that art and whether you have to give credit.

Source: OpenGameArt's frequently asked questions, read on October 14, 2026⁵.

In practice, keep a file with the name of each pack, the address it came from, the license, and the artist's name. When it is time to put the game in a store, the credits list is already done. This text explains the licenses, but it is not legal advice.

Will the AI draw the game's characters for me?

It will, from your description. The problem is getting it to draw the same character the same way in every image.

OpenAI itself warns, in the guide to its image AI, that the model sometimes has trouble keeping recurring characters consistent across several images⁷. In a game, the same hero shows up standing, running, jumping, and hurt. If each image comes out in a different style, the game turns into a collage.

The visual side is also where AI stumbles most when it builds the game. In an academic test from 2026, with 333 real game tasks, the AIs got an average of 51.4% of the gameplay tasks right and only 33.0% of the 2D graphics tasks, such as drawings, animations, and visual effects⁸.

That is why, with AI, the work of someone who can't draw moves somewhere else: from the pencil to the choices. Defining the colors, the style, and the size of the characters, and rejecting the image that doesn't match, is still up to you (our take).

Does Steam require a disclosure for AI-made art?

It does. Anyone who puts a game on Steam, the biggest computer game store, answers a content questionnaire, and part of it is about AI⁹.

The rule separates two things:

• Content made with AI before the game comes out, such as art, sound, text, and translations that go into the game. It must be disclosed, and you guarantee that nothing in it is illegal or copied from someone else⁹.
• Content the AI generates during play. Besides disclosing it, you must say what safeguards exist to prevent illegal content⁹.

Using AI only to work faster, such as an AI that helps write the code, has been outside the rule since the January 2026 revision. The disclosure also applies to marketing materials and to the game's store page¹⁰. When it created the rule, in 2024, Valve said it would show much of the disclosure on the game's page, so buyers know how AI was used¹¹. These are Steam's own rules and they can change: before you submit the game, read the current version of the questionnaire.

The disclosure is already common. In a census of 53,597 Steam releases, from July 2023 to July 2026, Sulka Haro counted that about one in three new games already carried the AI disclosure, and that declared use is mostly visual¹².

Do players reject games with AI-made art?

Some players do, and some don't care. In Brazil, the Pesquisa Game Brasil 2026, a survey of 7,115 people aged 16 to 55, showed both sides¹³:

The PGB figures are separate answers and do not add up to 100%. People who draw games for a living are the group most wary of AI, according to GDC¹⁴. On Steam, games with an AI disclosure got a much smaller share of sales than their share of releases, according to Haro's estimate: between 10% and 27% at the end of 2025 and in 2026¹².

Do I own the image the AI made?

There is no simple answer yet, and the law changes from country to country. The most cited case is the United States, where the official copyright agency published a report on the subject.

In January 2025, the US Copyright Office concluded that, with the technology available at the time, writing the prompt alone does not give a person enough control to be considered the author of the image. The report says the prompt works as an instruction, and the idea behind it is not protected¹⁵.

The same report points out what can be protected: the part made by a person that shows up in the result, such as your own drawing used as a base, and also the creative selection, arrangement, and changes the person makes to what the AI generated. Whether the human contribution is enough, according to the report, is decided case by case¹⁵.

In Brazil, the Copyright Law, from 1998, says the author is "the natural person who creates" the work¹⁶. The law predates image AIs and does not mention them.

For someone just starting out, the practical consequence is different: what makes the game yours is the whole (the rules, the way it plays, the world, and the choice of images), not each drawing on its own (our take). This section is for information and is not legal advice, and the rules can change. Before selling, read the terms of the image tool you used and, if in doubt, talk to a lawyer.

Which path should you choose for your first game?

For a first game, the shortest path is the one that takes the least work to make consistent (our take):

• If the game idea is strong and the art is secondary, start with simple shapes. You can swap the art later.
• If you want a more polished look without spending, use a single pack, from the same artist, with a CC0 license.
• If you want a look that is all your own, use AI, but define the style before the first image and check each one. And if the game is headed to Steam, disclose it.
• If you know someone who draws, agree in writing on who does what and who owns the art.

Whichever you pick, choose the game's look first: the colors, the size of the characters, and the mood. Before the art comes the idea: write your game in three sentences. And if your doubt is the code, see whether you can make a game without knowing how to code.

The other side

Simple art does not sell a game by itself. Thomas Was Alone had a professional designer, an award-winning narrator, and a soundtrack made by a musician, and it is a survivor among thousands of rectangle games nobody played. A free art pack shows up in many games and gives yours no identity. AI-made art requires a disclosure on Steam, some players turn up their noses at it, and OpenAI itself says the AI sometimes fails to keep the character the same. And the question of who owns an image made by AI still has no settled answer.

Your action plan

Check off what you've done. It's saved on this device, so you can pick up where you left off.

1. Choose one of the art paths for your first game: simple shapes, ready-made art, or AI.
2. Write in one sentence what the game will look like: the colors, the size of the characters, and the mood.
3. Open the Kenney library and see whether any pack matches your idea.
4. Create a credits file with the name, address, license, and author of each piece of art you use.
5. Read the AI section of Steam's questionnaire, if your game is going there.
6. Write the game idea in three sentences before generating or downloading the first image.