Platformer Drawn to Life has made its way to the Wii (and back to the DS again) in Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter, THQ's game that lets you draw your own hero and then play with it. Or draw your own penis man and play with it. They wouldn't let me draw any penis men, but I did get to check out the Wii version in action here at E3.
In Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter, players will draw over 100 items to aid them through traverse the lands and find the Artifacts of Power. Want hot dog ice skates? Done. Pizzas as wings? No problem. People watching you play won't know what the hell is going on, but at least it'll be funny to you.
While drawing your own character in the first Drawn to Life was more of a pencil-to-paper style format, this new Wii version has you pointing to the screen with your Wii Remote to draw. You'd think that it would be more difficult to get something nice-looking out of pointing at the screen and waggling, but it works fine, and you'll also be able to zoom in and edit your character down to the very pixel, getting your art as precise as you'd want. Don't worry if you're not an artist, though, as the game includes preset images and stamps that you can choose, mix and match, and even edit further.
You'll use the robust drawing tools to draw each limb, the body, and the head of your character, and then jump into the adventure game with your creation. The drawing theme continues into the game itself, and has you drawing platforms and devices to help you over challenges that you'll encounter that can't be overcome with standard platform jumping and running. For instance, our character came across an area that could not be scaled by a normal jump. By using a drawing tool, we were able to draw a connecting platform for the character, in this case a red-bellied dragon, to run across. If you need a moving platform, you'll draw it. Later you'll even need wings to fly, and you'll draw them to your liking.
Dashed outlines of boxes appear regularly in the game, and different colored boxes signify different properties. Blue boxes simply let you draw whatever you need to continue, directly on the play screen with your Wii Remote. Most interesting were the red boxes, that attach physics properties to what you draw. Draw a ball and it will fall to the ground. Draw a box and you can push it to climb up on it. It's up to you to decide how to continue and what to create.
THQ tells us that Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter also includes multiplayer elements, sporting events like soccer and volleyball. Your ability to create even extends into what your players and even the ball you'll play with looks like. If you wanted pirates versus ninjas, having them jump into a soccer match where they'd kick around a zombie head, you could make that happen with this game.
Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter took a good idea and a fun game and ran with it, making something that appears to be even more immersive, letting players be even more creative. It is set to release on both the Wii and DS in Fall of this year.
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12:00 PM on 06.05.2009
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