Drawn To Life: Two Realms Hands On Preview (Steam)
The quirky Raposa and your drawn hero return in Drawn to Life: Two Realms, the next installment in the beloved franchise! Uncover the mystery of the Shadow and save Mike and his friends.
Pros:
- Cartoon pixel art graphics.
- 1283MB Download size.
- Steam achievements.
- Full controller support.
- Graphics-fullscreen and resolution.
- Create your own character using the powerful creator where it goes all Mario Paint allowing you to draw whatever you want on a grid. You get tools like stamps, paint fill, etc.
- Platformer puzzler and creative gameplay.
- Belleview and Rapovill-free roam and find shards, stars, coins, and other rewards along with picking up missions. You get an arrow to help navigate.
- Imagination-you go into people’s minds and do a series of platforming and puzzle levels. (sounds more graphic than it actually is-you do puzzle and platform levels that’s it)
- Your character loses armor/parts as you take damage.
- Basic tutorial pop-ups as you play.
- Different level goals like defeat all enemies, place traps and enemies to make it to the goal, and straight-up platforming.
- Uses physics for jumps like jump on an enemy to go higher.
- Day/night cycle.
- Change your character via the creator whenever you want outside of imaginations.
Cons:
- Minimal graphic settings.
- Only one control layout.
- Can’t skip cutscenes.
- No voicework during cutscenes.
- Slow starter.
- No explanation or tip pop-ups in the character creator menu.
- Takes a while to get going.
- Never sure if it’s saved.
- The character editor is better with a mouse as the pad can be a bit clunky.
- No pause button or restart button when in a level.
Summary
How this game plays out is you can explore the two worlds town hubs (Belleview and Rapoville) and can find shards, coins, and get missions from the many residents. Missions are called imaginations and, well this will sound graphic but it’s not like that, it’s just a series of words they say, you go into someone’s head and play a series of puzzle platformers. These levels have set goals like get to the door, kill all enemies, or a puzzle type variant whereby you have a number of elements to place in the level to help aid getting to the exit. The drawing part is that at the start you get free reign to draw and create your character however you see fit and add stickers for a bit more flair, it’s all playing out over grids to make drawing easy and parts of the body are broken up to make it simpler. They do give you a default body so don’t fret if you can’t be arsed, overtime you get new stickers so you can just whack them on. Gameplay-wise and it’s just a slow-paced game whereby you talk to someone, instantly forget what they said, and then do 3 levels to open the next mission. The platforming part is basic but fine, the puzzle elements are good if you are into them but being up against it time-wise it soon outstayed its welcome. Walking around town is fine but again slow-paced and kinda uneventful. I personally just found it all slow and unengaging, I will give it a bit more time in case it opens up more but to be honest, it seems petty stuck in its way and the fact you don’t even get a restart or pause menu tells you everything. The takeaway is that Drawn To Life Two Realms is a simple platforming with puzzle elements where you can occasionally do some drawing and make it your own but the slow pace and game structure holds it back.
