Thursday, February 05, 2009

Drawn to Life: losing the darkness

Not the band.

I'm not sure what to make of this. The actual core game - the platform bits - are pretty good, with some clever level design ideas. The need to fiddle with jumping mechanics in the second world and the addition of underwater sections in the third is a shame, though, as it gives you the impression that the designers weren't confident with their concept. They should have been, since the idea of having to explore levels to find characters and paper bits works well with the way the levels are laid out.

The fact that you design the main character is great, and it really brings the game to life - even if it does rather limit the animation available. Designing blocks and lifts and so on is equally fun, though the limited palettes (and my lack of artistic ability) make my efforts clash with the background something horrendous. For some designs, the drawing's done for you, and instead you're left to colour in. I'm better at those.

The storyline, and endless back-and-forth fetching and talking mechanic that makes up the hub world, however, is rubbish. I don't care why I'm finding little cat-like animals in the levels, I just want to find them. According to the progress screen I've not completed ten of the fifteen levels. Nothing too hard yet, other than the bosses which represent not so much a difficulty curve, but a difficulty cliff. Luckily I've been collecting extra lives like nobody's business.

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