DrawSomething for iOS and Android is the most fun you can have with a stylus
DrawSomething is a game that has quickly made it to the top of both the Android Market and the Apple App Store. The concept is simple enough: you pair up with a friend or a random person, and take turns drawing one of three words that the other person then guesses using a set of available letter tiles that have to be rearranged and chosen from (not all are used). The three words have different difficulties, and different rewards, 1-3 coins each. Both the drawer and the guesser gets the reward if the drawing is guessed correctly, so it’s nor as much competition as it is about trying to help each other (hopefully without cheating and writing the word). You can have several matches going at the same time, and pop back in to do a new turn.
This casual take on the duration of a “match” also helps offset the load times, which are often quite high. This is because the other person doesn’t just see what you have drawn, he or she also sees the process of drawing it. You also get to see what that person does while guessing, including things like rearranging tiles, blowing away useless letters using bomb, and making guesses. While it’s helpful to be able to see the drawing process, and fun to see exactly how easy it was to guess, the transfer of this “video”-like data (likely just a set of “coordinate updates”, not actual video) can take a while, especially if both the drawing and guessing took a while.
The game is a lot of fun, and the non-competitive and social nature of it is probably part of why it has become so popular. You end up playing with all sorts of players, which in itself can be amusing enough. In just a short while I came by people who I assume didn’t speak English well enough to know certain words, people who either suck at drawing a lot or simply have small-screened devices, people who have rather peculiar associations, and people with a pure lack of logic. For instance, how about drawing the word “shadow” by drawing various items standing up and then a clone beside them that’s on the “ground”, but using the same amount of detail and colors on both? I kept thinking of synonyms for “falling” until I realized the logic. It’s all part of the fun though, and you’ll likely end up laughing at both your own and others’ drawings.
The only big downside I’ve found aside from load times is stability. On Android – or my tablet at least – the app force closed and got a black screen multiple times. I also ended up trying the free version first on Android and then buy it on the iPad for the bigger screen, and that caused a random error message saying I was playing on multiple devices even a couple of hours after I uninstalled the Android version, and without any pattern other than it suddenly popping up once in a while.
There are free versions for both OSes, though the paid versions are only $1 right now anyways. The in-game coins are used to buy more bombs, and you guessed it, you can buy coins with in-app purchases. While I would encourage people to stay away from that part of the game, the app itself is definitely worth the money, and is definitely a lot of fun. Tablet users will have an advantage with screen size, a stylus will help even more, and owners of devices with active digitizers will have the ultimate advantage. If you do end up downloading the game, hit me up for a game with my user name Cptnodegard.
[iTunes | Android Market]
