[22/07/2025]: Revisiting nostalgic videogames 1: Drawn To Life

Recently, I decided to replay a game which I used to play a lot when I was younger, that being Drawn To Life. When I was around the ages of six and seven, the only console I really had to play was the Nintendo DS and I owned a couple of games, those being Pokémon White Version, Professor Layton, Sonic Rush and Drawn To Life.
For some reason I had the urge to revisit the game and see how it fairs years later and these are my thoughts.

The game is an adventure platformer set in a world inhabited by creatures called Raposa. The world was created by the creator, who drew everything within it and wrote the Book Of Life, which contains pages for each of the things within the world. Unfortunately, the world is slowly crumbling due to shadows (being the result of a Rapo called Wilfre, who decided to draw in the Book of Life despite being told not to), with villagers and pages from the Book of Life going missing. Out of all the Raposa, only one still has faith that the creator still cares about them, that being Mari, the daughter of the Mayor. The creator hears her plea and decides to send down a hero to restore the village to its former glory. The story is obviously based on Christianity, with the creator being God the Father, the hero being Jesus and Wilfre being Satan, which doesn't bother me whatsoever, but I know that may put some people off.

As for actual gameplay, you play as both the creator and the hero. You take over as the creator when designing things for the world (such as platforms, buildings, the hero, etc) and mostly play as the hero for things such as levels. There are four worlds, each having a different theme, such as the ice/winter themed one. The worlds have their own selection of levels, with those levels containing four pages of the Book of Life, three missing Raposa and three "secret" extra things to find.

So, is the game any good? Aesthetically, it is. The art style, music and tone of it are amazing. It has a great feeling to it and it feels nice to see the town improve as you progress through the game. The gameplay itself is a mixed bag. The levels for the first two worlds have decent gameplay, mediocre, run of the road, but still passable and fun, but the worlds after get worse. The third one consists of water stages and Drawn To Life is afflicted by the infamous "water stage syndrome", with the water physics feeling sluggish and sloggy. The bosses also suck, with the second and third feeling more like they were unfair than actually difficult and a challenge.

So, is Drawn To Life a good game? Kind of? Not really? It's average. It's quite gimmicky and most of my enjoyment from it does come from having played it at a young age. Unless you're someone who isn't picky with games or haven't played much in the past, I wouldn't recommend trying it. It's more of a relic of the past when touch screens were a novelty than something which feels incredibly well crafted around the DS like The World Ends With You.