Drawn: Trail of Shadows

I recently came across this game when originally searching for inspiration for the fairytale brief. There are 3 games within this series and are all adventure games with puzzle solving elements that will make you progress through the game itself. Drawn: The Painted Tower was first, then Drawn: Dark Flight and the third in the series was Drawn: Trail of Shadows. I downloaded a trial version of Trail of Shadows to see how the gameplay was but also to look at the aesthetic side of things. I had previously seen some screenshots of the game and it got my attention almost immediately (probably the main reason why I decided to look further into this game). It's a very beautiful game, very colourful and detailed. The hand-drawn element isn't something you see very often in many games, and they have managed to integrate it within the actual story. There are parts where the scene has been ripped apart and you have to find the missing pieces before you can progress further. It's like someones ripped the canvas in which the painting was on.

As my game is aimed at families, I could take inspiration from this game and create textures that seemed like they were hand painted. My initial idea was to create something that didn't look too realistic in order to appeal to my chosen audience, however I will have to experiment with different textures to see what would work best.

The gameplay itself makes you solve puzzles to advance further in the game. At the beginning you have a choice of two different difficulty levels which in my opinion is better than just being set to one. People have the opportunity to choose what they would feel comfortable with and if they complete the easy level, then they also have the choice of going back and completing it at the harder level. By doing this there shouldn't be the problem of some people saying it's too easy or some saying it's too hard, you get to open up the game to a wider audience.

From what I played during the trial version, I found really enjoyable, intriguing in terms of storyline and the puzzles really made me think and got me to work for them. I'm probably going to have to go buy this game now as it's something I want to continue with. I want to see the story progress and see how the artwork changes with it too as where I ended was where it was just getting to a 'darker' stage. Instead of bright, warm colours, it had drastically changed to very cool blues and darker tones of what originally had been shown. Music isn't the only thing that can influence the atmosphere during a game, the colours do too so depending on what I use can drastically change the meaning and atmosphere of my scene.