The Drawn to Life series is what put developer 5th Cell on the map when the original game launched on the Nintendo DS way back in 2007. The game utilized the DS’s touchscreen to allow you to draw your own character and objects in the game, and while mechanically the game itself was a pretty average action platformer the drawing ability injected a really unique and fun element into the experience. Drawn to Life would lead 5th Cell to create Scribblenauts a couple of years later, a game with a similar idea but where the drawing was replaced with the ability to input text and have items generated from tens of thousands of combinations. Seeing what sort of wacky stuff you could get the item generator to produce made Scribblenauts an absolute delight, and while the Drawn to Life series co-existed alongside it, it was really Scribblenauts which became the household name.
Well, for the past several years 5th Cell has been largely dormant, so as we learned early last month developer Digital Continue has partnered up with 505 Games to take over the Drawn to Life reigns and produce a brand new entry in the series titled Drawn to Life: Two Realms ($4.99) which has just launched on a variety of platforms today. Digital Continue was actually co-founded by one of the designers of the original Drawn to Life games, and others who have previously worked on the series have come together once again for Two Realms. This new game actually continues the story of the first two games and picks things up a few years after the events of 2009’s Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter. The two realms in the title refer to the Raposa realm and the Human realm which you’ll be able to bounce between during the course of the game. Check out the launch trailer.
When the original Drawn to Life made its way to iOS back in 2014, it had the unfortunate position of arriving on a platform that had been enjoying the excellent Scribblenauts Remix for a few years already. Not that the two series aren’t quite different from each other, as outlined above with the drawing of Drawn to Life and the item-generation of Scribblenauts, but taken chronologically it was really easy on the Nintendo DS to see and appreciate how Drawn to Life led to the Scribblenauts formula. In reverse order, Scribblenauts Remix just made the original Drawn to Life feel outdated. Scribblenauts Remix also happened to be like a greatest hits version of that formula that worked wonderfully on iOS’s touchscreen. The Drawn to Life port on the other hand was more or less a straight port from the DS, so its main “draw" if you will, the drawing itself, was compromised from the get-go as it was designed for the much more precise DS stylus input method rather than our big clunky human fingertips, which was the main point of contention in our review.
As excited as I am to revisit the lovely world of Drawn to Life, that aspect I just mentioned will be the biggest thing I’m looking for. This is a game designed in a world where touchscreens are ubiquitous, so hopefully Drawn to Life: Two Realms takes my big clunky human fingertips into consideration. That said, this seems like another charming and quirky adventure and it’s currently on a 20% launch discount on iOS making it just $3.99. Over on Android there is no launch discount for some reason as it’s at its regular price of $4.99, but on Steam or Switch the higher-priced-than-mobile versions are both also on 20% discount down to $7.99 from $9.99 until December 14th. Whatever platform you end up grabbing it on, let us know what you think about Drawn to Life: Two Realms either in the comments below or in the game’s discussion thread in our forum.
