Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter Review
By Gaetano Prestia
The concept behind Drawn to Life is definitely ambitious: draw your own hero and bring them into a world that needs saving…and drawing. The execution of such an idea is obviously the most important aspect of the concept, and when the first title in the series hit the DS it was met with critical acclaim. The combination of great stylus and touch-screen gameplay, nice visuals and a charming story made Drawn to Life one of the most unique and entertaining experiences on the handheld. When Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter was announced for the Wii, the question was asked as to how developer Planet Moon Studios would make the difficult transition from drawing on the touch-screen to drawing in mid-aid with the Wii-mote. While the final product isn’t quite as fluid as it was on the DS, the Wii version of The Next Chapter still offers an entertaining adventure, one that should appeal to both a younger and older audience.
When Drawn to Life arrived on the DS it had one major pulling point – it let you create the world. Not only were you creating your own hero to take on the game’s villains, but also you were using your own creative pizzazz to draw things within the environment. You had a platforming adventure with a decent amount of challenge, as well as a new level of interactivity that took full advantage of the DS hardware. With The Next Chapter on Wii, you’ll move through bigger and far more challenging levels, fused together with new drawing mechanics that attempt to enhance the platforming experience.
The game kicks off as your created hero is called into town to help retrieve the drawing book that is used to keep the world alive and kicking. Once you retrieve the book, chaos is unleashed and you’ll embark on an adventure through dull and object-less environments that need your drawing skills to liven things up a bit.
As you move through the levels you’ll come across two different forms of drawing mechanics. The most common is the white canvas, which has you filling in missing parts of the environment. It can be anything from a spider on a tree, to a butterfly in the air or a windmill at the top of a building. A lot of the time these objects don’t have any direct influence on the experience, but if you want the world to be as lively and energetic as possible, it’s best to try and draw in everything that needs drawing.
You’ll earn cash as you move through the worlds, which can be used at the town store to buy new templates and drawing options. While most of the stuff on offer doesn’t really enhance the drawing experience, there are a few things thrown in there to add a little incentive into collecting as much cash as possible. Some things in the world aren’t that simple to draw, so getting a cool template to mess around with is a safe bet.
Once you access the canvas you’ll have a number of drawing options at your disposal. You’ll be able to choose the thickness, colour and shape of your stencil, and you’ll also have access to a number of templates you can use for specific objects if you aren’t all that confident with your drawing abilities. You can access a template and then add a bit of colour and some extra eyes if you wish, which is great if you want a nicely drawn outline to mess around with.
There are basic size guidelines for each object you drawn and once you create your item, the game will animate it and bring it into the world for you to see. Even if you create the most outrageously ugly and deformed butterfly, the game’s physics engine will turn it into a breathing and moving insect, one that suddenly went from being ugly and dead on a white canvas, to alive and flying through a bright world.
The second form of drawing is new and makes its first appearance in the Wii version. There are several different coloured boxes that you’ll come across in the worlds, each of which have their own unique physics based on the shape you draw within them. Blue boxes indicate an area where you can draw in a simple line and use it as a platform to move across a large gap. Using the Wii-mote and pressing the b-button, you draw a line on the screen, which remains in mid-air for a small amount of time for you to use as a platform. In the red boxes, any shape you create will automatically fall to the ground and move dependant on its shape. So if you create a circle, the shape will fall and roll until it loses momentum.
Both of these boxes are used frequently to solve puzzles and move across otherwise insurmountable areas. For example, you might come across an area with a red box on top of a blue box. In the blue box you create a mid-air platform, before using the red box to create a large box, which in turn falls onto the blue platform, giving you a small tower to climb and reach the area above. You’ll occasionally come across tacts that are handing in mid-air, and these can be used to stick any object from the red box to create a seesaw-type object. As you progress through the game you’ll rely on these physics more often, as you’ll often have to create several platforms and objects just to move through a certain area.
When it comes to drawing objects, you’ll need an incredibly steady hand. The use of the Wii-mote as a drawing tool isn’t anywhere near as effective as the stylus on the touch-screen, which is a given considering you had something to rest the stylus on. Furthermore, you’re often very restricted when it comes to the templates and size of an object, and because it’s often very difficult to drawn in even the simplest of shapes, most of the items you draw probably won’t even come close to the image you had in your head.
However, that’s probably where a lot of the game’s fun lies. While you won’t be able to show off your drawing skills like you could in the DS version, The Next Chapter does make room for some outrageous and hilarious creations. It does, after all, give you full control of what you draw into the world, so the laughs you’ll get from the hideously hilarious objects and animals you’ll create may overshadow any issues with the free-hand drawing. If you can look at it as a positive made out of a negative, you’ll get more of a laugh out of this game than you did with the DS version.
Yet the title’s difficult drawing techniques aren’t the game’s only issue. Load times are small but very, very frequent, and really hinder the experience. They definitely ruin the pacing of the experience, especially when you’re moving through a world and you choose to draw in every little object with every canvas you come across. Furthermore, you’re brought back to the main city hub after every level, so there’s some small backtracking pretty much after every level.
The Final Verdict
Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter isn’t quite as solid as the original on the DS, but there’s still plenty of fun to be had. The platforming elements are great for the most part, even if the load times hurt the pacing. Drawing with the Wii-mote may be a chore for some, but it leads the way for some really funny creations. Still, it’s an aspect of the game that needs to be fixed for any future iteration. The developer really needs to come up with a way to create a more fluid and less restrictive drawing platform. The introduction of the physics boxes allow for some nice puzzles, adding a new level of difficulty to the levels that we didn’t see in the DS version.
Gameplay
7.0/10
The platforming gameplay is simple enough, but the drawing elements are the main factor here. You’re creating the world and using your own drawings to progress. The physics boxes work really well and make for some great puzzles, whereas the templates and canvas drawings can often be a chore if you don’t have the steadiest of hands. Still, it’s just as fun as the original and it’s great to add a bit of your own creative juices to the world.
Graphics
6.5/10
It’s a cheap presentation with basic visuals. The focus is put onto what you bring into the world, rather than what’s already in it.
Sound
6.5/10
A quirky soundtrack that compliments the experience coupled with weird sound effects.
Value
7.0/10
It really depends on your patience. You can play through the whole game without having to go to the canvas as a lot of the puzzles rely on the physics boxes, which are drawn in-game. If you can turn a negative into a positive and don’t mind bringing in mutated butterflies and spiders, then you’ll want to progress to see what other messed up things you can draw. If you can’t, then the drawing mechanics on the canvas will probably hurt the experience for you.
Overall
7.0/10