In Third Person

Draw Something is the latest mobile game to take the world by storm. Odds are, if you’re not already playing this game, many of your friends are. I admit that I am pretty late to the party, and probably wouldn’t have joined the party at all if my girlfriend Steff hadn’t convinced me to at least give it a shot. Did I think Draw Something lived up to the hype?

Draw Something is essentially Pictionary. You and a friend/rival/partner take turns drawing pictures and guessing what the picture is. As basic as the concept is, the execution of the game is what sets it apart. To start, as the drawer, you get to choose from one of three words; each with a different score associated with it based on difficulty. After you choose a word, you’re free to draw whatever you like with the basic drawing tools available to you. Drawing with your finger isn’t ideal, but it works well enough most of the time. It sure hasn’t stopped people from drawing some really crazy stuff, which is part of the fun.

Once the word is sent, its up to your partner to successfully guess what it is you were trying to convey in your picture. What’s cool about this process is that you as the person guessing get to see exactly what your partner did to draw the picture (or series of pictures if you get creative with the trash option). From there, they get a series of jumbled letters and are told the number of letters in the word. If they’re having trouble guessing, they can choose to use a bomb to blow out some of the unnecessary letters. If they get the word right, you both earn coins, which can be used to buy more colours or more bombs for future use.

The biggest selling point to Draw Something is that it’s a great game to play with friends on the go. Thanks to the game’s support of asynchronous multiplayer, you can pick up or drop a game at any time. You can also have as many different games going as you like as well. I also like the fact that it’s not really a competitive game. You and your partner are working together towards a common goal.

If you have a cheating heart, then the entire Draw Something experience falls apart. You and your partner could easily just write out what the word is every time to break the experience. It sucks that there’s no way to stop that, but there isn’t really any way technology could stop it. As long as you and your partner keep an honour system, the game works as advertised.

I am not as captivated by Draw Something as the rest of the world is, but not because I think it’s a bad game. It does the online Pictionary thing really well and I’ve had fun with it. It doesn’t hurt that between you and me, we have dozens of friends we could potentially play with already. I’m fairly certain that Steff and I will be playing this together for awhile. If you have any interest in Draw Something, free and ad-supported versions are available for Apple and Android devices. There is a paid version as well that opens up some more words and more coins, though the free experience works well. Though I’m still not 100% what the hype is after playing Draw Something, but I think it’s a neat game nonetheless.