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I get the feeling that not a lot of core gamers played last year's stunningly capricious adventure game Drawn: The Painted Tower. I know I didn't — at least not until about a month ago when I received a code for the game as part of its sequel's preview package. Because of this, you may well be wondering why I would even bother writing up a rundown of its sequel Drawn: Dark Flight.
The reason is simple: Both Dark Flight and its predecessor easily eclipse any other indie titles I've played in recent months in terms of atmosphere, originality, and overall quality.
Developer Big Fish Studios is positioning the series as “hidden-object game" with a casual bent, but make no mistake, Dark Flight fits the conventional definitions of an adventure game to a T. Throughout the title's five- to six-hour escapade, you can expect to encounter myriad context-sensitive brain teasers and assorted logic puzzles.
At first glance, it seems like pretty standard fare for the genre. Underneath the hood, however, it's a standout experience.
The story so far
The story places the player in the role of “The Stranger” — a name that I suspect is one of the game's several Myst references. As The Stranger, you aid a child named Iris, who possesses the power to create paintings and drawings that come to life, in her quest to fulfill her destiny of becoming queen.
The twist is that the Iris' ability is a genetic trait of the realm's ruling house, and years ago a malevolent king killed her family, usurped her throne, and cast an evil shadow over her kingdom. As the last of her royal lineage, Iris and her faithful servant Franklin fled to a secret haven: the first entry's titular tower. The plot of the original finds Iris' refuge beset by the tyrannical overlord.
The evil king often gets mistaken for other fantasy celebrites like the Nazgûl.
Immediately following a hasty break from the tower during the precursor's conclusion, Dark Flight sets you loose into the surrounding town hot on the heels of a fleeing Iris. Most of the story focuses on your concerted efforts to light three powerful beacons that will restore Iris to her full ability and ensure her rightful ascension to the throne.
It's all about how you sell it
What makes Drawn so special is its presentation. It terms of milieu, it finds its peerage among the children's novella (and animated feature) Coraline, Myst, the physics-based platform puzzler Trine, and the works of Hayao Miyazaki and Don Bluth. The title's constantly changing mix of the macabre and the fantastic earmarks as it must-have for anyone who is a die-hard fan of fairy tales and whimsy. Ostensibly, it's nothing more than a well-animated slideshow, but Drawn's lush and rapturous visuals delight with every revelatory investigation into its world's secreted nooks and clandestine crannies.
Pop-up books always wowed the crap out of me when I was a kid. I guess they still do….
The creators' eye for detail is laudable, and their wildly imaginative — and surprisingly comprehensible — puzzle scenarios leap off the screen. The minds behind the game didn't let Iris' paintings box in the conceit of her abilities; anything she illustrates is fair game. One head-scratcher has you filling in the blanks of an unfinished pop-up book she designed, replete with paper-crafted whozits and whatsits that spring to life when you manipulate the book's various pull tabs. Another has you act out a play staged entirely through a construction-paper collage of a sprightly pirate and his ship.
Ultimately, the game functions solely on how it sells itself as a cohesive product. In a current-gen landscape where would-be storytellers peddle tired, meandering narratives sold on bombast and gimmicks, Drawn is a rare find that is truly enchanting. Its bit-by-bit reveals mete out nuggets of story using a draw-back-the-curtain method that is well suited to the medium. You start with almost no information and suss out the details as you go along. (The approach, which has its roots in titles like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, is becoming more and more apparently effective as yarn-spinning in games continues to mature.)
Couple all of this with a beautifully orchestrated soundtrack that ranges from sanguine to melancholy to downright funereal, and the result is very probably one of the most cinematic adventure games I've ever played.
Drawn often breaks from its oppressive city for detours into beautiful dream worlds created by Iris.
Finding a place for Drawn
Unfortunately, much like its predecessor — which came out almost one year ago to the day — Drawn: Dark Flight finds itself displaced with regard to both its moment and its genre. Big Fish decided to release during a short period sandwiched between Xbox Live's Summer of Arcade and fall's big releases — probably not the best time for a title like this.
As a representative of its class of game, it doesn't seem to fit in among its peers. Dark Flight is akin to older efforts like Cyan's Myst, and unlike its contemporary Telltale cousins such as Monkey Island, it doesn't sport any of the humor that is currently en vogue within the genre. Because of this, it may seem off-putting to newer fans of the form.
Overall, though, my only real complaint is Drawn's overly liberal hint system. As I said, the developer has gone to some lengths to appeal to casual gamers with the series — it's the driving idea behind the Big Fish brand — but the consequence-free clues do have the potential stymie any real sense of challenge for those without discipline. Fortunately, the puzzles are far more logical than your run-of-the-mill chicken-and-a-pulley absurdities and far less obscure than the base-25 number puzzles in a title like Riven: The Sequel to Myst.
For my part, I say to hell with Telltale's overwrought japes and laugh-a-minute yuks, and down with overhyped Summer of Arcade releases that feature inscrutable price points. The Drawn titles are all about fantasy in grand style, and if you let them grab you, they can elicit effervescent feelings of joy and discovery. And at $9.99 (as well as $6.99 for the admittedly prerequisite original adventure) you're unlikely to find a downloadable game this summer — or an adventure game this year– that is more worthy of your time and money.
You can find Drawn: Dark Flight, along with its predecessor Drawn: The Painted Tower, at BigFishGames.com. A collector's edition featuring an additional two-hour quest, a soundtrack jukebox, and a concept-art gallery is also available for $19.99.