Having recently reviewed ‘Draw Something’, we were tipped to a similar application by a Swedish company called ‘Visiarc’. Their app is called Duddle. As well as Android, it is available for Windows Phone. You may have heard of it, as it was the Hackathon 2011 grand prize Winner.
Duddle is another Pictionary based turn-by-turn game. It can have between 3 and 10 players per game. This means that the game is a competition to get the question before your opponents so you can get the most points. When drawing, and guessing, you get 30 seconds. If everyone has failed, you get 15 seconds to revise your drawing before another round of guessing starts. But alas, to stop you spamming as many answers out as quick as possible, each guess gives you a 10 second breather before you’re able to go again. It is multi-lingual, having English (US), French, and Swedish, each with different categories of words.
I quite like the gameplay to be honest, as it feels a little less pointless as it feels more competitive. This is down to the timer, the way the rounds are done, and the fact there are rules to abide by. You can report players that don’t want to play by the rules. Best of all, it is in landscape which means you have a better drawing space.
Another awesome feature is the fact it has push notifications to tell you when it is your turn to guess or draw. This means you don’t have to wait around or keep checking to see if your “friend” has finally decided to doodle a man holding a knife over a dead pig. You can also speed up the replay of the doodle to double speed, which is nice. With the addition of being able to like and share pictures to facebook and twitter, there’s no need to keep a third party app running to take screenshots of your child like stick men.
- Stopwatch, Honest!
There are a few things, which I don’t like though. There are only 2 crayons to choose from (dark and light), and no eraser. It also had me stumped to start off with, partly because I only skimmed the help files (tl;dr) and partly down to my stupidity. My first word was stopwatch, with the countdown in the top left. I think, right, okay, that must mean to wait. It loads the canvas, and I do not get a word. By the time I have drawn something, I realise what I was meant to be doing and cannot erase. Fail. (This was against the developers – I told them it was my daughter playing. Sorry for telling fibs…)
Overall, I think I’d give this 4/5 stars. When the statistics (which I have been told are planned) are added, and the addition of an eraser, I’d be happy to give this a 5. It’s the competitiveness of the game here that I like – I like a good old challenge!
It is available for free in the Play Store, with an in-app premium version that removes the adverts after rounds.
Now for the inevitable; which do I prefer? Draw Something with is colourful and child friendly interface? Or Duudle with its competitive scoring and landscape drawing?
This has been a tricky one for me. I’ve spent a lot of time this weekend comparing the games and their offerings, going into the specifications of what each one offers and seeing which comes best. It does not work. Both have equal good and bad points. I have tried my best to cover these in both reviews. Whilst they are pretty similar, each has taken their own spin on it. If I was to recommend one of these to someone today, I’d probably have to say Duudle. The landscape layout, lower ram usage (20MB vs 70MB on my Desire HD), and competitive scoring makes it more of a challenge. There are rules in place, and you can report cheaters. So, what are you waiting for? Go and download it, give it a go, and add me (CaptainStu72) and see who is best.
