I was having a quick look at Drawn To Life on the DS. One of the first things you need to do is create a hero to save a village...
So I thought, who better than...
I'm playing this because I'm stuck on Zelda until the Post Office pull their finger out and deliver my headset/mic for my DS. My built-in mic is broken and I'm stuck in a cave where I have to shout for help.
Anyway, Drawn To Life is a fairly simple, but enjoyable and engaging platformer-cum-RPG. The gimmick is that you get to draw a lot of the assets... your 'hero' for starters - you can eventually have three different characters and you can edit them endlessly anyway - we're now running around as one of our cats in a red shirt and yellow shorts. You also get to paint your vehicles and draw springs, platforms etc.
The best thing is that I am playing this co-operatively with Little s u d 0 jr. She's mostly doing the stylus work - colouring in (I can draw and lock a template for her to fill or scribble over), or using it to clean up the evil black goo that's tainting the world. It's working really very well and she really understands what she's doing. She's happy to watch me do the jumping and shooting (snowballs, don't worry!)
This is the first videogame we've really played properly together and I'm really stoked that she's pestering me to pick up and play. I'm also pleased that this seems to be a game that will engage both of us. It's simple enough for her to understand and for me not to get frustrated with repeating sections (and her bored), yet complex enough to keep me interested. A very well balanced little game.
Friday, October 05, 2007
Holding Out For A Hero!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Elly (my daugfhter) has this game too - she's found it a little confusing from a saving point of view, and I haven't had a chance to work that out yet. I have her trained to save before turning off the DS (AC:WW), and it isn't clear whether you need to for this one (she asked me if there was a Resetti the mole for this game too)
She loves the drawing, but I didn't know you could make a template - do I need to RTFM or is it more obvious than that?
Your Chief is very impressive - that screen always makes me laugh because of the "disapproving post" in the background.
Re: Saving. On the RPG-style screen (in the village (currently named Dubble)) you do not need to save. Everything will be exactly as it was when you restart (which is a nice touch, if only all RPGs were this forgiving.)
In the platform sections I don't know (although I will find out next time we restart as I switched off just after starting a level.) It would be great if this section does instantaneous auto-saves too. It's such a nice touch in a game that seems to be aimed at younger players.
For templates I draw an outline in black and then lock the colour black. Your charge can then use the fill function to her heart's content. Unfortunately she'll still be able to fill and draw outside the black lines but a bit of judicious erasing can sort that out later. Without templates we tend to end up with single coloured rectangles.
Post a Comment