Call of doodle

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This article was published 27/04/2017 (3252 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s no location that hasn’t played host to firefights in video games. The surfaces of distant planets, the fiery pits of hell, abandoned space stations, ancient Roman arenas, Old West vistas or sprawling open cities that stretch for kilometres. No matter how mundane or how exotic, almost every setting has seen bullets flying back and forth.

The frenetic multiplayer shooter Drawn To Death takes the battle to one of the most alien and unknowable locations in the medium yet: the psyche of a teenager.

Aside from short live-action clips set in a high school classroom that play when the game starts up, the entirety of Drawn To Death is spent within the pages of a teenager’s notebook as he doodles his way through class.

It’s a fairly standard online shooter focusing on four-player deathmatches, but it becomes something unique when the traditional elements of the genre are born from the creative outbursts of a restless teenager. In this context, characters you get to choose from then become either hyper-absurd monstrosities — a half-shark, half-ninja creature named Ninjaw — or cleverly reflect the subconscious of the kid himself. An impossibly heroic G.I. Joe-like soldier named Bronco is gradually revealed to be inspired by his older brother serving in the military, while an obnoxious representation of his stepdad, with whom he does not get along, is simply known as Alan.

The amount of effort that was made to tie each character, weapon and environment into the thoughts of one teenager is staggering. These aspects of world-building are almost always hidden in the background, but when you do discover them, they allow for funny and often touching insights into the mind the entire game is set within.

The art style is garish but unique, with characters and environments roughly sketched out with splotchy pen ink on lined loose-leaf paper and then filled in where necessary with scribbled lines of colour.

The game’s sense of humour is equally brash and does not shy away from the juvenile vulgarity that would undoubtedly inhabit a world hatched from a teenage mind. It’s intentionally obnoxious but, like the layered world-building seen in every other aspect of the game, the jokes are used to sneak in moments of pathos and clever character development.

There’s so much rich subtext to dive into in the game’s design, it’s a shame that as an online shooter, Drawn To Death is merely OK.

It’s an archaic throwback to the arena shooters of the 1990s, with small enclosed levels, power-ups strewn about everywhere and a lightning-quick pace that means you never go more than five seconds without fighting.

The controls are clunky, the camera can make the action tough to follow and a lack of variety in modes and levels means things get old quickly.

It’s the mind in which these skirmishes take place that ultimately makes Drawn To Death so memorable. It’s a character study disguised as an online shooter, not the other way around.

Mel Stefaniuk is a freelance writer whose loves of video games and writing have been intertwined since growing up with the text adventures of the ‘80s. He can be found on Twitter as @DisgracedCop.