Since my review of Draw Something a little over a week ago, the game’s creators OMGPOP have been snapped up by social gaming giant, Zynga. In an incredible deal reportedly worth $200 USD, the fledging company certainly has much to celebrate, proving again that it only takes one application to turn your fortunes around in the fast paced mobile applications industry.
I personally love the game despite some of its flaws but let’s be honest, there are definitely things that Draw Something could do better. Hopefully some of the guys at Zynga/OMGPOP would even read this article and incorporate the feedback in the next update. Read on for the top 5 things that would make Draw Something even more drawsome
1) More words
Draw Something desperately needs more randomised words in its pool to choose from. It’s been 2 weeks now since I picked up the game and have on many occasions been given the same set of words, not only for myself to draw but from other people’s drawings too. I’ve definitely seen the word Starfish on more than 5 occasions, that’s enough for me to guess correctly as soon as my mates draws more than one point of a star. Ridiculous. In addition to increasing the number of words, OMGPOP needs to focus on a more international set of words. As I don’t remember the number of times I’ve come across a 3 coin word that happens to a member of the Wu-Tang Clan! They may be a household name in USA but certainly not here in Europe.
2) Greater drawing precision
With the application name being Draw Something, it’s not as easy to as I expected. Granted I am not the most artistic of people, but I don’t think I am too bad either, at least I was getting As in art class during high school! The main problem is that it’s difficult to be accurate with the touch screen, this is made very obvious the more I used the smallest brush stroke. It would be nice if there was a zoom feature when drawing, something similar to how you can accurately select words in text messages on Apple’s iOS. That would certainly be drawsome.
3) Playback bar for partner guessing
It’s awesome that you can see how your partner gets on at guessing your drawing. However after playing for more than 2 weeks now, I have resorted to pressing the skip button, as my initial patience of sitting through lengthy playbacks has gone. One idea would be to have a playback bar where you control the speed and point of playback as often I have found I am most interested in the point at which my partner guesses my drawing correctly, this would save a lot of time having to sit through something you have seen before.
4) Saving a drawing (and sharing it on Facebook)
I don’t think I need to elaborate too much on this one. As we all know this is another desperately needed feature. For the more tech savvy and willing individuals out there, they have been able to take a screen shot using their phone’s native functionality and shared drawings on Facebook that way. However for the majority of less enthusiastic, there should be an option to save your drawing into an archive and share freely with what ever means they choose to.
5) Integrated Chat
With the world becoming ever more “social”, a chat feature is something that I would like to see in Draw Something. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy like WhatsApp but the basic feature to communicate should be in place. I can even imagine it being a channel for people to make new friends, especially if the Facebook integration becomes more involved, with Zynga now on board I wouldn’t be surprised to see the game ported over to Facebook.
So that’s it, my top 5 things Draw Something can do better. Please feel free to add your own comments below and start a discussion on how Zynga can improve this Drawsome title!
UPDATE: My prayers have been answered! At least partially. During the news announcement where Zynga revealed the purchase of OMGPOP, they also stated they would focus on drawing saving and integrated chat as their next application features. Good Stuff!
