Draw Destruction: hilariously competitive drawing game

by Unknown at 4:17 AM
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Features & Use

The idea behind Draw Destruction is pretty simple: you draw something and send it to your friend, who then has to draw something that can destroy your drawing. So if I draw a butterfly, you can draw a boot, then I can draw a lawnmower and you can draw a 4WD, and so on. There's a time limit to respond but it's quite long at ten days, down from the original thirty days to respond. You can also apply rules to your games, so you have to draw things starting with a particular letter of the alphabet or things with more than one leg. Or there's ''No Rules. Free destruction.''

Draw Destruction is cleanly laid out and nicely designed. / © Nextino

When you first launch Draw Destruction you are greeted by a super short tutorial to give you the basic gist of the game. The main screen is pretty self explanatory and familiar, with a summary of your current games (your turns and your opponent's turns), tribunal action (with the ability to judge other players' games), history and shop. There's an achievements section that is apparently coming soon and a couple of options to buy more coins. There's really nothing stopping you from just jumping straight in though, as I did. The way the game is set up is very self-explanatory and intuitive. The drawing tools are things you've already seen and the controls are very straightforward, although some are still unavailable.

Yep, that tutorial pretty much sums up Draw Destruction! / © Nextino

Unfortunately you only get shades of gray plus black and white on your color palette to start with. Other colors need to be bought for 100 coins, but you get several shades of each color when you purchase them. You start with 180 coins, meaning you can buy one color right off the bat. Each sent drawing earns you 5 more, so after four turns you can buy a second color. But from there you're going to be waiting a while until you have a decent palette on offer. That is, of course, unless you buy more coins via in-app purchase or vote like crazy in the Tribunal, where you are credited with more coins when you vote on the side of the majority.

You can unlock a few colors early, but then you need to play more or buy them. / © Nextino

The Tribunal is actually one of the funnest parts of Draw Destruction. Not only can you make some cash by judging other people's disputed drawings, you get to see the whole trajectory of their game, and trust me, they are pretty silly. I found myself getting carried away laughing at other people's terrible drawings and funny jokes in the way I do when I'm on Vine or YouTube. It's that addictive. Voting in the Tribunal also gives you good ideas for the kinds of twisted stuff your fellow players are drawing and also some kick-ass ideas like nuclear bombs, guns, black holes and God. But for every seemingly unbeatable drawing there's some smart aleck who can come up with something to destroy it!

Draw Destruction lets you be as silly as you want and judge others' silliness in the Tribunal. / © Nextino

Which brings me to perhaps the coolest part of Draw Destruction and the secret to what could send it viral: the perversion of the idea to mindlessly entertain yourself in ways the developer probably never intended. In all honesty, the basic game is cute and fun but can get tiresome fairly quickly, especially if you are playing someone who starts with a tank and drops an A-bomb or black hole on their second try – there's not much replay value against such opponents. But that is where twisting the rules comes in: you can make up your own rules and be as crude, ridiculous or downright inappropriate as you like. When judging Miley Cyrus and wrecking ball drawings in the Tribunal you'll see what I mean.

The main home screen and game rules. Free destruction! / © Nextino

You've got various sized pen-tips, plenty of colors available, some more effects coming soon, the ability to share to social networks, comment on drawings, and generally entertain yourself with the foolishness of it all. It has all the hallmarks of being a massive cult hit: simplicity, addictiveness and openness to being co-opted for any silly ends the player can come up with. There's a few teething problems still, like notifications always saying ''his'' turn even if your opponent is female, a notification saying your game has been rejected if a drawing has gone to the Tribunal and several areas currently under construction, but the solid groundwork is there.

Screen & Controls

As mentioned above, the interface is familiar and intuitive, even if its graphic design is not quite to my taste. Everything is easy to find and the game sections are easy to work with. It's not really easy to draw fine lines with your fingertip though, so users with a stylus may be a little bit better off, but artistic credibility is hardly the point of this game.

A lot of pencil sharpening beats a pencil? Sure, i'll share that to Facebook! / © Nextino Speed & Stability

I encountered no crashes or freezes while testing Draw Destruction. You need to have internet access to load the game though, without one you can't see cached games or drawings at all. There are minor lags when the app is loading new drawings, which seems odd considering what I would assume to be extremely small file sizes, but you get used to it quite quickly and don't notice after a while. Drawing, sharing and judging are all fluid and easy.

Price/Performance Ratio

Draw Destruction is free and is supported by an ad banner at the bottom of the game screen and the occasional ad pop up. This is hardly a problem though. While it's perhaps reasonable to only have black and white at the beginning and the ability to pick up two other colors fairly quickly, it does limit your creativity a little when you only have shades of two colors in which to paint your masterpieces until you've played for a while. But the accumulation of coins is not as slow as you may think, especially if you're voting in the Tribunal. I personally wouldn't pay for coins, but I don't know if I'd really be likely to play long enough to unlock all of the different colors.

I'm not likely to buy coins with real money, but you accumulate coins quickly enough. / © Nextino Final Verdict

Draw Destruction is a fun game with a simple idea: use your wits to draw ever more destructive things to out-destroy your opponent's creations. As a softly competitive drawing game it's really great and would appeal to a wide variety of possible users. But as a simple idea that can be tweaked to meet your own silly or twisted ends it's a perfect canvas on which to draw whatever it is that makes you laugh. The presence of Pedobear in the Play Store screenshots and a category called ''celebrities who aren't Chuck Norris'' are pretty clear examples that even the developer sees this as part of the fun!