Ambitious and a mile away from what we managed on Draw Something
‘Draw Something’ does exactly what it says on the tin as you draw or guess other players’ doodles in the phenomenon that is our Follow That App of the Week for April 29th 2012.
Love
It’s such a simple concept, familiar to Pictionary players across the globe. You start a game with someone on the Draw Something network, pick a word – easy, medium or hard – dust off your doodling skills and then see if they can make sense of your drawing.
Then it’s your turn to guess. Get it right and both players get coins. Use the coins to unlock cheats to narrow down the letters in your answer or change the words.
The fun in this game is the challenge of both your art and lateral thinking skills, but also seeing what a mess or masterpiece the other players come up with.
It’s highly addictive and has become a huge phenomenon and one of the app success stories of all time, with its carefully crafted freemium model temping you to opt for the ad-free version and to buy coins to make the game easier.
We also love that it’s accessible for young and old. The youngsters to practice spelling, drawing and guessing and for older players to dust off those art skills and attempt some more ambitious doodles.
Don’t love
While it’s an addictive game, the pressure to upgrade from ad-free and to buy in-app purchases detracts from the game. The free ad-funded version overwhelms the user with ads and it would take hours to unlock enough coins to purchase a cheat. There’s no denying its commercial success though.
The real issue with this game is the lack of offline play. You need a connection to open it when the turn based nature of the game should mean you can store a couple of moves offline, vital given the flaky network that many users experience. The drawing tools are also basic, but that is part of the fun, indeed now there are sites dedicated to bad and good examples of doodles.
Overall
It’s fun, addictive and accessible for young and old. You may have to fork out to avoid the ads, but this hugely successful game shows how freemium business models should be done in the app world.
Get it on iTunes: here in the free version. We recommend you try before you buy.
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