Drawn®: The Painted Tower

[u]GAMEPLAY[/u] Drawn: The Painted Tower has you exploring a mysterious tower whose environments are presented as a series of screens that don't have animated objects within. You solve puzzles and explore by using your cursor to hover over key points of interest and to interact with objects. There are pictures or areas within pictures and puzzles are presented with virtually no text or, at the very most, a few cryptic clues to give you a vague idea of what to do. Your ultimate aim is to reach the top. There is a trial and error feel about the game but it gives the player a decent enough workout for the brain. [u]PRESENTATION & DESIGN[/u] Drawn: The Painted Tower is a moody, atmospheric game which is put across immediately by its eerie main-menu. To sombre and mournful tones, a choir sings gentle choral notes in the background as if in a peaceful monastery. We also see the stone carving of Iris - the protagonist of the story - appear before us in a sad, pale turquoise colour. All of which sets a suitable tone adding to the mystery and dark nature of the game which has an almost dream-like quality. It's more of an adventure game than a hidden object game and like many adventure games doesn't tell you how far you've progressed or how far you have to go. Although there are objectives to fulfil and it keeps you informed, there are no records kept or tabs kept on chapters. When you fire up the game, you're thrown in immediately from where you finished the previous session. [u]CONCLUSION[/u] Adventure games can be obscure and downright nonsensical while others can be too text-heavy or contain overlong and repetitive dialogue trees. Thankfully a few come along that seem kinder to us noobs and a bit gentler but which still manage to be challenging enough for us to be entertained. This is one such game. Granted, although there is an option to skip the puzzles (and there is a very nice hint system), I personally only felt the need to skip two which I found too tricky. 5/5