For those who have preconceived ideas about Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter after seeing its boxart, be warned that your assumptions are most likely to be correct. The Next Chapter is a very child orientated adventure, with a cutesy style that both suits the Wii style, and makes grown men feel the need to dispose of their lunch into a nearby bucket. That said, there are aspects of the game that prove just why Drawn to Life was one of the more interesting titles on the market when it was released in 2007, are these subtleties enough to warrant a purchase for those above the age of 4?
From its beginnings on DS, it’s easy to see how easy it must seem to translate the gameplay of Drawn to Life to the Wii. The game still revolves around drawing different elements of the world, but this it’s all done using the Wii remote. This is a serviceable replacement for the Stylus, but sadly lacks the necessary accuracy to give creations the same level of detail that made the DS game so addictive.
You draw anything and everything in Drawn to Life, whether that is a set of eyes that will appear on the nearby trees, a bridge for you to walk across, or even the character you play as throughout the game. In fact, this is how you start the adventure, creating your avatar either from the ground up, or using one of the many blueprints available to you. I spent 45 minutes experimenting around until I found the right style of character, though it will take a lot longer for artistic, or perfectionist types.
In the same way that this works in the opening section of the game, you encounter easels on certain sections of the map, which cues you to draw another item that has been ‘stolen’ from the world by the enemy (About all there is to the story in The Next Chapter). This becomes annoying in some sections of the game however, as a heavy reliance on creating your own fun through drawing these items creates areas that lack any real skill.
What you draw inside the box given to you when you select an easel is completely up to you, and while the first reaction for some may be to begin with the crudest images they can come up with, the opposite of this, painting in a block of colour registers with the game too. This means that when creating objects you interact with, such as the aforementioned bridge and the tail you use to swing around branches have preset reactions when used. It doesn’t matter how you actually draw the item, it will be animated, and interacted with in the exact same way every time. This is a tad disappointing, especially when the game revolves around this mechanic.
Other than drawing items into the world, the rest of The Next Chapter is your usual 2D platforming, with only a few alterations to make it that bit more than a weak Mario clone. Coloured boxes are found in the same way that easels, but rather than taking you to a separate drawing tool, you can draw a limited amount in the area indicated. At first this allows you to reach higher places with ease, but as the game develops the lines you draw begin to comply with gravity’s laws. As with the main drawing mechanic, this starts off effectively, but it soon becomes apparent that trial and error is your main tool for passing these sections of the game. It’s disappointing once again to see a promising concept losing touch very early on in the time it will take to complete what is a surprisingly lengthy adventure.
This feeling is seen across the whole of Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter. Rather than utilise the strengths of the design throughout, the game ends up being little more than a generic platformer with some neat ideas hidden in the background. Kids should still enjoy the idea of creating their own world, in a much more child friendly way than say LittleBigPlanet, and for them this will be a great way to spend a few afternoons. For fans of the original, get a hold of the DS version, as the controls are much more accurate when drawing objects, as task that you will be doing a lot over the course of the game. Not as easy a transition as it originally seemed, Drawn to Life : The Next Chapter on Wii fails to deliver, despite early promise.
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