Draw Something... or Write Something?

Recently, there has been a craze over a new app on iOS and Android - the Draw Something app by OMGPOP, which is something like Pictionary. There are some interesting features though, like being able to earn in-game coins when your word is guessed correctly or when you guess a word successfully. The app provides you with the length of the word and twelve letters to choose from, so it makes the game somewhat simpler. For a start, you are also given five bombs, which can be used to destroy the unnecessary letters, leaving you to unscramble the remaining letters to solve the puzzle. Coins can be used to purchase colour packs, as you start with a rather limited selection of colours. Alternatively, you can use coins to buy more bombs.

I get quite irritated when people write words instead of drawing pictures. What's the point of playing then, if you just use words? This game is Draw Something. The goal is to use pictures instead of words to get your point across. Some examples of this app becoming Write Something:

1) Subway - a picture of a sandwich and the words '6 inch sub' above

2) Bon Jovi - 'it's my life!'

3) Alone - 'home-?' + a picture of a house

4) Password - 'User name & ?'

5) Ferry - a picture of a boat and the word 'Batam' above it
6) Vader - a (horrible) picture of someone that looks like a skeleton and the sentence "I am your father" above it

And of course, the best examples are those who just spell out the whole word itself with a lame apology "I don't know how to draw!".

Look, if you don't know how to draw, don't choose that word. One good feature of this game is that the game lets you choose one out of three words to draw, so there is no excuse as to not knowing how to draw. The three words vary in difficulty and gives one to three coins (to both parties) if it is successfully guessed. Some examples of the easier words (worth one coin only) - ear, eye, cry, love, moon, boat, rain, smile, bird, ladder, leg - they are so easy that there is simply no excuse for not knowing how to draw them.

One feature that I found impressive - you are able to watch a live and real time recreation of your opponent's drawing process. And the app is designed such that 'idle time' is not included. So if you were to draw halfway, answer a phone call and resume drawing after ten minutes - this ten minutes is snipped away, sparing your opponent the frustration of staring at a half-complete drawing for ten minutes.

However, bugs and flaws are still aplenty. Once you enter a game, you can't exit and are forced to complete it from start to end, which encompasses seeing your opponent guess your word, guessing your opponent's word, followed by selecting and drawing your next word. One way to get around this is to shut down the app, but this sometimes causes you to 'pass' your turn involuntarily. 

Push notifications sometimes do not work, and games frequently do not refresh. The only way to force-refresh it is to shut down the app and start it again. Another serious bug prevents people from playing with each other entirely; games sometimes vanish from one player's screen but remains on the other player's. If you try to create a new game, the app will inform you that there is already an ongoing game and prevents you from proceeding. 

The game also doesn't allow you to view past history, whether it is your own or your opponents' drawings. There is no in-game chat too - something I would love to have, for example, to lambaste one of my friends for drawing an upside-down squid (tentacles facing upwards) and with ink clouds above it. 

And of course, to remind others that this game is not Write Something.