Draw Something Review

By Fraser Macdonald June 17, 2012 at 11:43 am

WHAT IS IT?

A social drawing homage to Pictionary which is an absolute hoot for players but its turn-based gameplay might be an employer’s worst nightmare.

WHAT'S IT LIKE?

Like all good smartphone fayre, simplicity itself. Find Draw Something-initiated friends by username, email or Facebook and start a game with them. Alternatively, the app can pick a random opponent for you. You’re given a choice of three words, ranging in difficulty, and have to draw a simple picture that might enable your opponent to guess the word. So, by ‘difficulty’, we mean words which are difficult to represent pictorially. Or not – you might be an artist. We’re not.

Creating your picture is done on the touchscreen using your finger, with basic controls – paint a line, erase a section and undo the last daub. Initially you get just four colours to work with, but you’ll presumably choose the simplest words. ‘Chair’, for example, need not use more than one colour, unless you’re really going for perfection. Your opponent guesses at what your picture is, and if successful, you both get a number of coins, depending on the difficulty. Get enough coins and you buy more colours, or buy ‘bombs’ that, when activated, eradicate some of the incorrect letters from your board during your guessing round. You can, naturally, buy more virtual coins using actual coins, via in-app purchase. There are two versions of Draw Something – a free ad-sponsored version, or a paid-for premium version that kills the ads and nets you a bag of coins as a deal-sweetener - £2.23 on Android, £1.99 on iOS.

But we’re skipping over the part which makes this game such a hoot. Once sent a new picture, your rival not only sees your final picture, but an animation of you drawing it. Unlike Rolf Harris, most of us cannot create a magic marker masterpiece with just a few cunning strokes and a bit of humming. It’s fantastically funny – which is why everyone is doing it, and getting in trouble in offices and classrooms across the country. Fortunately, this kind of game normally survives only as a fad – will we still be giggling by Christmas? Probably not.