Mr.Farmville

Though Depict was released on the iPhone back in December by MakeShift Games, the game has shown staying power, recently being recognized as an OpenFeint Gold game, meaning that it’s a title showing “exceptional” uses of OpenFeint’s social features.

Depict is essentially a slight variation of Pictionary, in which players try to guess words based on each other’s drawings. Instead of typing in random answers, Depict takes a multiple-choice approach, thus alleviating the hopelessness of figuring out a bad drawing. That’s a good thing, since the iPhone itself is a bit clunky to draw on, with a setup similar to the pencil tool in Microsoft Paint.

The game comes with two major play modes, consisting of Classic and Lightning game-types with limited time rounds. The former is the most like Pictionary in that players use their finger to draw a random object using a simple pencil tool and a basic palette of colors. On the other side, the guessers are granted a handful of possible answers of what the drawer could be drawing and must select the correct one. Sometimes they might be easy, like a “blue whale,” while other times they may become more challenging with phrases like “half full.”

The winner is the person who scores the highest number of points by the end of the game, with the drawer earning one point for drawing and one more for the total number of points earned by the guessers. The guessers earn one point for guessing correctly and one extra for each other guesser they beat to the punch (be aware that players get one guess).

As players are playing, each drawing appears to be saved and can be rated by the users in the game from one to five stars. These drawings are then used again in the Lightning mode of play which consists of only the guessers. Again, users can rate drawings here too, but they never actually draw.

In each mode, there are also three different ways to start a game. If one is looking for a quick fix, they can enter a Quickmatch and play with random individuals, or invite OpenFeint friends to join in a game. Of course, if the user isn’t feeling particularly social, they can always not invite friends to play, and opt for a simple solo game.

Since Depict is a game that utilizes user generated content, which obviously comes with a level of anonymity, there is always the concern of obscene and offensive content. It goes without saying, that if one delves into random matches, this is an inevitable eventuality. All the same, users do get the ability to police themselves by being able to “blow the whistle” (literally, it’s a whistle button) on any user who is drawing something offensive.

Curiously, the ban of drawing offensive content is actually a written rule in the game. However, this runs strictly on the honor system. The same goes with another rule that states that users cannot use letters or numbers while drawing. Since these are drawings, the system cannot identify them as such, so on some of the harder ones like “oval,” many people still just draw the oval then write “oval” when people don’t get it. In cases like this, breaking the rule may be justified, but it kills the game when people do it for something easier, like a fish. Still, there weren’t a terribly high number of these situations.

Other social elements worth mentioning are the integration of a handful of achievements and leaderboards through OpenFeint. Interestingly enough, Depict also gives players customizable avatars to play and identify themselves with. It’s not so much like traditional avatars (e.g. a person), but players actually get to draw them themselves. Moreover, they can draw a good number of them to pick and choose from as well.

Sadly, since Depict is basically Paint, the level of artistic value is very low. Everything has a pixelated look, which will be hit or miss with many potential players. The real complaint is that it’s a bit tough to draw well on the iPhone with your finger, as it is hard to see what you’re doing on such a small space (this is especially bad if you happen to have big fingers). Thankfully, the game also works on the iPad, so the latter may be a better choice.

Overall, Depict is a pretty nice social game for the iDevice family. It’s simple enough to be fun, and is very enjoyable if you have multiple friends playing with you. Of course, if you don’t have friends with an iDevice, the Quickmatches are an almost equally good way to have some fun. All the same, the fact that it does use user generated content does mean it runs the risk of housing offensive content, leaving users on the honor system to report it, and hopefully, clean it up. Nevertheless, it’s a risk coupled with anything that uses the internet, and all in all, Depict is a good title to kill some time with.

Source: Inside Social Games