TUAW's Daily App: Drawn: The Painted Tower

I am playing Drawn: The Painted Tower right now, on my first generation iPad. I got it because I've liked other games from Big Fish Games.

My background as a gamer: Fifty year old male, who loved the Sierra Online games (Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, etc.) and then games like Myst. Shooters and arcade-style games are not my thing. I like adventures I can take at my own pace.

This one has beautiful artwork and pleasant audio. As with other games of its type, the story is fairly simple, and largely irrelevant to getting through the game. Sometimes the "object" you need to complete a task is absurd and arbitrarily chosen to make a puzzle work. There's not a lot of logic and reason in play. Still the game is fun. I look forward to encountering each puzzle. The finding and using of objects doesn't require much thinking. The game leads you through, and sometimes it feels like the game is on "automatic pilot", and the player is just clicking on things to keep the "auto pilot" running.

Sometimes it feels like iPad doesn't have enough memory for the game. Things start getting slow and quirky. (Running with all other apps closed, and a fresh restart of the iPad.) I'm interested to see if the extra memory in the iPad 2 makes a difference. Still, the game has played flawlessly.

Some of these games have interfaces that get a little too fiddly, with regard to navigation, viewing inventory, and so forth. This one is very well done. You can use some simple gestures to move among scenes, and inventory, hints, and help are right there for clicking.

I don't yet know how long the game is, because I haven't finished it. I'm looking forward to getting back to it this evening. I figure I'll probably finish it tonight. I have others waiting to be played!

I recommend Drawn: The Painted Tower to people who like these adventure games, where you move from scene to scene, putting together the items to unlock puzzles, and then solving the puzzles. It's a beautiful, high-quality game. I look forward to more like this from Big Fish Games.