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IGN Review of Crayola Treasure Adventures
Brilliant! Just simply brilliant. This game is home to one of those concepts that makes you sit back, smile, and say, "Why didn't somebody think of this earlier?" It's a very simple idea, it's executed remarkably well, and it's a perfect fit for the touch screen tech on the DS. Crayola Treasure Adventures is a virtual box of crayons, and it transforms your Nintendo DS into a coloring book of nearly endless possibility.
Who doesn't remember spending hours of their youth engaged in the world of imagination that a simple box of Crayola crayons could create? Drawing and coloring are some of childhood's most innocent, universally appealing activities. The only problems you might ever run into were running out of paper, or using your crayons so much that they got ground down too short to continue their work. Digitizing both the crayons and their canvas for the DS eliminates those potential issues, and makes this package instantly appealing.
There are over 100 different coloring book pages to choose from in Crayola Treasure Adventures, each one featuring a fun scene with a dinosaur, a fire truck or some other simple cartoon character. The box of Crayola crayons you can open up is packed with 120 different signature shades. All of them match the real Crayola hues you remember: from standard colors like Blue and Red to the off-the-wall choices like Burnt Sienna, Inch Worm and Purple Mountain's Majesty.
You can color to your heart's content using any or all of the crayons, in two different styles – the default method of input applies the color to the page in a patchy, smudgy style that simulates the way real crayons work, while an alternate marker pen selector gives you the power to create smooth, even strokes. And, uniquely, there's no worrying about straying outside the lines in this design – the game will automatically detect if your stylus has gone too far outside of the current bounded region of your selected drawing and will keep your color safely inside the intended area. It's a novel addition, and makes things more fun, because you can scribble across the entire surface area of the touch screen to fill in a picture's background, for example, just so long as the first place your pen touches down is within the bounds of that same region.
The drawback to having a coloring book in video game form is that, when you've finished your latest masterpiece, there's no way to put it up on the kitchen refrigerator with a magnet. No way to print your work, or, more reservedly, no way to save your creations to cartridge memory. Crayola Treasure Adventures lets you play as a pint-sized Picasso, but your paintings are always lost and gone for good if you power off the game, or even if you just choose to return to the main menu to select a different page to draw on.
Additionally, not all of the coloring book pages and crayons are available from the beginning – you have to unlock the majority of them by playing through the game's story mode. That's where the "Treasure Adventures" come in. You play the part of partner to a talking, treasure-hunting Red Crayola, and together you go on a quest to track down the three stolen Color Crystals. Three black-and-white bad guys have taken off with the magic orbs, which are the source of all color in the world, and they're threatening to turn the planet into nothing but a drab greyscale landscape if they aren't caught and brought to justice.
Impressively, the Treasure Adventures story mode is even more engaging than the already fun coloring book. It's built on three core activities – solving jigsaw puzzles, playing Connect the Dots, and speed coloring – and it's got a fun and vibrant storyline that is simple, but hard to put down. The environments you and the Red Crayola travel to all look great, rendered in a visual style that matches the Crayola license very well, and the music is unexpectedly great. You'll hear up-tempo Egyptian-inspired themes as you traverse a dry, dry desert, and salty sea chanties while you hunt down Redbeard the Pirate. And while the activities are mostly basic and easy to complete, the speed coloring events provide some real challenge near the end of the quest. You'll have to scribble faster than you've ever scribbled before to keep up with the game's pace.
©2007-10-19, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Who doesn't remember spending hours of their youth engaged in the world of imagination that a simple box of Crayola crayons could create? Drawing and coloring are some of childhood's most innocent, universally appealing activities. The only problems you might ever run into were running out of paper, or using your crayons so much that they got ground down too short to continue their work. Digitizing both the crayons and their canvas for the DS eliminates those potential issues, and makes this package instantly appealing.
There are over 100 different coloring book pages to choose from in Crayola Treasure Adventures, each one featuring a fun scene with a dinosaur, a fire truck or some other simple cartoon character. The box of Crayola crayons you can open up is packed with 120 different signature shades. All of them match the real Crayola hues you remember: from standard colors like Blue and Red to the off-the-wall choices like Burnt Sienna, Inch Worm and Purple Mountain's Majesty.
You can color to your heart's content using any or all of the crayons, in two different styles – the default method of input applies the color to the page in a patchy, smudgy style that simulates the way real crayons work, while an alternate marker pen selector gives you the power to create smooth, even strokes. And, uniquely, there's no worrying about straying outside the lines in this design – the game will automatically detect if your stylus has gone too far outside of the current bounded region of your selected drawing and will keep your color safely inside the intended area. It's a novel addition, and makes things more fun, because you can scribble across the entire surface area of the touch screen to fill in a picture's background, for example, just so long as the first place your pen touches down is within the bounds of that same region.
The drawback to having a coloring book in video game form is that, when you've finished your latest masterpiece, there's no way to put it up on the kitchen refrigerator with a magnet. No way to print your work, or, more reservedly, no way to save your creations to cartridge memory. Crayola Treasure Adventures lets you play as a pint-sized Picasso, but your paintings are always lost and gone for good if you power off the game, or even if you just choose to return to the main menu to select a different page to draw on.
Additionally, not all of the coloring book pages and crayons are available from the beginning – you have to unlock the majority of them by playing through the game's story mode. That's where the "Treasure Adventures" come in. You play the part of partner to a talking, treasure-hunting Red Crayola, and together you go on a quest to track down the three stolen Color Crystals. Three black-and-white bad guys have taken off with the magic orbs, which are the source of all color in the world, and they're threatening to turn the planet into nothing but a drab greyscale landscape if they aren't caught and brought to justice.
Impressively, the Treasure Adventures story mode is even more engaging than the already fun coloring book. It's built on three core activities – solving jigsaw puzzles, playing Connect the Dots, and speed coloring – and it's got a fun and vibrant storyline that is simple, but hard to put down. The environments you and the Red Crayola travel to all look great, rendered in a visual style that matches the Crayola license very well, and the music is unexpectedly great. You'll hear up-tempo Egyptian-inspired themes as you traverse a dry, dry desert, and salty sea chanties while you hunt down Redbeard the Pirate. And while the activities are mostly basic and easy to complete, the speed coloring events provide some real challenge near the end of the quest. You'll have to scribble faster than you've ever scribbled before to keep up with the game's pace.
©2007-10-19, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved