Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter is a game similar in spirit to its new, younger brother, Scribblenauts, but it is not nearly as ambitious (or flawed) as that now-famous game. While Scribblenauts is concerned with providing an outrageously large sandbox of words and characters for players to mess about in, Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter is a more controlled, directed experience. It is, to put it simply, a platformer, and it is not a terribly revolutionary or brilliant platformer. It’s the world that the players create around themselves that makes this game special.
The Next Chapter begins in a delightful, Harold and the Purple Crayon-esque fashion: you get to create important parts of the world of Drawn to Life. You start by creating yourself (the game’s God, essentially), in whatever bizarre likeness you might wish. From there, you draw the sun, moon, and your avatar and minion in the real world. Of course, you can’t create the houses, color palettes, and people of this world. For the most part, they will look the same in every game. It’s a kind of limited god-like control, but it really makes your world feel like your world.
Armed with a sunglasses-wearing sun and a robot hero (if you are at all like me), you must set about aiding the friendly and somewhat helpless denizens of The Next Chapter. The story is not terribly exciting (and involves a dangerous act of drawing/creation, in a nice, thematically appropriate development), and, for the most part, your progress through it (from a mechanical perspective) is not breathtaking.
As your God-sent avatar, you will hop, slide, and even butt-bounce your way through obstacles and enemies. You collect hearts, powerups, lives, and coins. The coins you use to unlock new minigames and parts of the main town, while the hearts and powerups are all rather self-explanatory. Even in these mundane spaces, The Next Chapter injects the familiar with whimsical new life.
When you first approach a small chasm, the game stops you, commanding you to fill in the uncrossable gap with a bridge of your own designing. Unsure in your own artistic talents, you might design a boring line, or maybe two, filling in the color in between. You will instantly regret your decision: now, and ugly, barely-utilitarian bridge rests before you. Worse, that same bridge will now fill future spaces of the same sort. After all, you have not just built a bridge; you have built that kind of bridge.
While some people might be compelled to leave each creation as it first appears, I spent much of my time editing and touching up my seldom-attractive creations. This is a game that lets you design the way every single health heart looks! You can design beautiful little flocks of flapping butterflies, floating platforms, and more. At first, it just seems like a fun way to personalize the world. You might as well be adding silly little deals to your car in a Need for Speed game, you might think. As you play, these player-created objects become more important. It’s strangely gratifying to see your creations living (and sometimes moving) through the world.
Again, beyond the creative, somewhat self-absorbed creation and appreciation afforded by these parts of the world, The Next Chapter is just a platformer. Its inhabitants are not terribly convincing or interesting, and the world that needs saving is nothing without your small additions and alterations. Scribblenauts derives its character from the cavorting, combative creatures that the player can create and then alter and destroy. In The Next Chapter, your creations are not nearly as full of life. They are, however, very much yours in a way that no other adventure game, or any other game, really, can match.
Things can and do get a bit more complicated, however. Eventually, you encounter large spaces in the game world, spaces you have to platform across. The spaces are bounded by a large box, and you can draw whatever you want to inside the box to aid you in your journey. Of course, the things you draw slowly melt away. It’s as if you were drawing platforms in a Mario game, and everything you drew was made of sand. These sections are not terribly tricky, but they (and their ilk) really help keep the game fun and interesting in the later levels.
There’s something to be said for this brand of interesting, entirely simple creation and alteration of an otherwise unimpressive world. Of course, to employ this kind of user-centric level of creation and integration in a more complicated, deep game would be extremely complicated and tricky. What if a 3rd person action game allowed you to sub in your own textures and creatures as part of the game (let’s forget mods for just a second). It might be a daunting idea, but Drawn to Life proves that it’s a direction we really must explore. No other game lets you plug your own artistic inclinations into the world in such an everyday way.
It’s that everyday-ness that really works well, and it doesn’t advertise itself in a flashy way. You just start to see more and more of the world as something you’ve created. It makes thing familiar in a very personal way, a way most video games (designed by hordes of people) can never match. Even city-building games that are all about creatively (and strategically) molding worlds don’t fulfill this desire. It’s unique and worthwhile. Maybe next time they can add a slightly more complicated world onto their drawing engine.
The Good:
Your Own World: Seeing your creations in the game’s world is always fun and silly at the same time, and it never gets old.
The Bad:
Fun Enough: It’s not a good game either. It’s fun enough, but this is pretty simplistic, even for a platformer.
The Ugly:
Your Own Work: Your creations, while interesting, can look incredibly ugly at times, especially when compared to the whimsical world created by the designers.
Playthrough: Played through the main story, fiddling about in the minigames and distractions, for 11 hours or so. A physical copy was provided by the developers.
Recommendation: It’s a fun, diverting game, but approach it with caution: there isn’t a whole lot here.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
