Drawn to Life

"For Kids? Or Indie Art crowd kids?"

I'll explain the tag line right now: I constantly hear that kids do not like this game. The game is marketed to children, however I get returns on it very often. I personally enjoyed the game to a point and then realized one other thing: The game was meant for 20 yr old art nerds like me. Sadistic art nerds at that.

You start out learning about the little...cat/raccoon people's history how you (the creator) made their world and then suddenly left them (an odd way to start the game, you being a terrible father to these people). The drawing begins immediately with drawing the planet you're on. Simple, you draw whatever shape, color it whatever color and you're good to go. Next you draw some trees and what you think the little guys should look like. Also that doesn't do you anything. You could draw a hamburger but you wont see hamburger people sadly.

Eventually after a long read (which for children isn't always easy. Remember the cutesy cover screams 5+yrs and up but who can say those kids can read all that well yet?) you'll finally create your character. Fortunately they have templates you can use which is great cause drawing on the stylus is ridiculously hard. It can be mastered but it takes a while and again for children, patience is never a virtue. So anyway, I made my character after myself. I mean, What kid doesn't want to play as themselves?

Skip ahead past all the reading again and you're in a platforming game. Easy stuff, very simple Mario type stuff but what gets interesting is the drawing of platforms themselves. Sometimes it will ask you to draw a cloud or a raincloud. The best is your gun. Yes you get a "snow gun" that shoots snow balls. Harmless comic violence, if you're a child. If you're any reasonably immature adult as myself, you draw a fairly detailed pistol. And guess what, it looked great. So now I'm playing a game in a cute world totting a gun around shooting snowballs from my "Frost Glock" which I dubbed it accordingly.

Now you've read this far and you're saying "ok so whats the problem". Well thats it. The previous 3 paragraphs was the entire game. Not exactly, mind you, you've got people to rescue and alot of neat stuff to unlock, however it doesn't feel rewarding. For someone my age it was mind-numbing to go through all the trouble and for someone much younger it was too difficult to figure out why they have to read so much in the first place. You can't skip it, don't even try.

Overall: The graphics are great...or not depends on how well you draw, honestly. The sounds are actually quite good and the game play itself depends on who is playing. Who knows? Perhaps some really old RPG nerd will like it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/19/08

Game Release: Drawn to Life (US, 09/10/07)