Pictionary - It's not the board game you're looking for
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If, like me, you grew up in the 90's, then there's a pretty good chance you know exactly what Pictionary is. It's a drawing-based guessing game that sees you and your team drawing cards and trying to make your way around a board.

This digital adaptation throws a lot of the actual board game component of the experience to the wayside. You're not working your way around anything. Instead it's all about drawing and guessing.

If anything the game owes more to the likes of Draw Something, which in turn borrowed a lot of its concepts from the original Pictionary board game.

No board

There are two different game modes here. The first one is turn-based. Here you're given a card, which with a word on it. You scribble out an image of what's on the card, and then send it to another player.

They then guess what you've drawn, and send you their own doodle of a different card. If you link your account up to Facebook you can play with real-life friends. Or if you'd prefer avoid the link-up and play with strangers.

The second option is a little closer to the original experience. You're playing in teams of two. One of your draws, the other one guesses. Unfortunately this mode only lasts for one go before you're booted back to the main menu.

When you win a round, or guess a picture correctly, you're given some coins and a chest. These chests take a while to unlock, but once they're open you'll get new brushes and pencils that you can use to create more accurate pieces of art.

It makes for a pretty casual experience, but it's missing a lot of the things that made Pictionary so fun in the first place. For starters the stringent rules of the board game are basically impossible to enforce here.

Someone can quite easily just scribble down the word you're trying to guess, and that takes the shine off things pretty quickly.

Pic-shun-ary?

There's definitely something to enjoy here, but if you were expecting Pictionary to make the leap to digital intact, you're going to be a little bit disappointed.

This is a casual rendition of the smallest part of the experience. But there's no timer, no strict set of rules, and no family members shouting at each other. And in a way, that's what made Pictionary so excellent to begin with.

Pictionary - It's not the board game you're looking for

It might bear the board game's name, but Pictionary owes more to mobile gaming than it does to the collection in your cupboard
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Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.