Draw Your Game Review

Draw Your Game is a platformer which allows you to create games using MS Paint or felt tips and a camera to create levels. It features on mobile and PC devices.

When I first discovered Draw Your Game, it jumped out as an interesting concept. It allows for the creative among us to create levels from simple sketches. It does this well, extending to using a piece of paper to create simple, platformer style environments.  Using colour recognition, it assigns mechanics to colours, for example; red is a fatal object while blue is a dynamic object that falls. If blue hits red, the blue spirite will be removed.

There is not a story included, but the concept is far from proper storytelling. Instead there are some default levels which award access to harder levels within the offline mode, community created levels and new sprites to use as your in-game character.

Here’s where reality kicks in however with mobile ports to PC. There are micro-transactions customary from the mobile market, and it isn’t pretty. Everything from sprites to authorising your level to the cloud demands coins. They can be acquired easily in game through level completion but seeing this practice within PC games isn’t a welcome one. What it does do though is push for people to play levels made by the community rather than just churning out bad levels.

You can find a modified version of my level on the games cloud

On the topic of the mobile version, the quality is very good. In a summary, the game is almost identical to the PC version albeit having a control scheme more familiar to existing platformers on mobile. The app is free so maybe try checking it out before buying the Steam version.

There are two game modes within the game. Escape is a mode in which you to get off the piece of paper. Attaining this goal will require you to find a gap within the black lines that will allow you to jump off without hitting any red zones. The other game mode is Destroy Blue Elements which requires you to destroy anything blue within the level. To do this you need to hit them to make them fall and hit red zones.

Creating a level is straight-forward. Simply taking a picture of a drawing or uploading an image from a file will allow you to scan and review your level before having it go through a review process and then uploaded to the server. The scan isn’t always completely accurate so editing the colours with the in-built MS Paint style editor (unlocked with coins) will help to more accurately generate the level. This overlays your picture (which then becomes the background)

I found creating levels to be nostalgic as I used to draw levels and imagine characters playing the games that I created. While it may not produce the greatest of games, it does allow your creative ability to flourish. If you have ever thought about game design but don’t want to bother with any programming or art, this game may be a brilliant use of your money.

Overall this is a good game but has its flaws. The concept is limited by colours and due to a lack of programming to create custom levels, its simplistic. It is the closest thing to actual game design you can get to without months of dedication into educating yourself in technology. If you happen to have a child who likes to draw, this would be an interesting game to put their designs to the test.

For the cheap price that it is being offered, I would recommend it. For those that are looking for a game long-term however, look elsewhere. Draw Your Game is too empty to dedicate too much time to, the content is created by the players by contributing the designs. There is content contained within the game, just not enough to satisfy you for long.

REVIEW CODE: A FREE PC code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.