Review: Drawful 2 (Nintendo Switch)

In an age when multiplayer gaming is common, there are still plenty of limits on the kind of games you can play from within the same room as your mates. As a part of the Jackbox library, Drawful 2 mixes up the typical party game format.

The structure of the game doesn’t require a split screen for everyone to play, meaning that you can comfortably play with anywhere between three and eight players. The screen doesn’t get crowded, so while it’s probably advisable to play on TV mode, it is possible to use the small screen as long as you have enough space for everyone to sit close enough to see.

The need for multiple controllers is also expertly side-stepped. By using smartphones to play the game, stable WiFi and plenty of battery life are all you need to include everyone at the same time.

Drawful 2 gives each player a unique prompt and they have to draw a picture to represent it. The other players then have to come up with their own title for the drawing. Finally, everyone has to guess the correct prompt out of a selection of options that includes the titles that people have come up with themselves.

Points are awarded if you draw a good enough picture that people can correctly guess the original prompt and if you come up with a convincing enough title of your own that people believe it.

You can also offer your friends like bonuses if you particularly like the titles they came up with. This doesn’t give them any points, but the person with the most likes at the end of the game does get an honourable mention.

The kind of prompts that the game gives you vary in terms of how difficult it is to draw them. Some will be fairly straightforward to ease you into the game, but others will be weird, to say the least.

The weird ones are the ones that really make Drawful 2 a party game. Wondering what is going through someone’s mind while they struggle to figure out how to draw a ‘beef night’ is definitely a fun sight to behold.

Drawful 2 comes with twice as many prompts as its predecessor, Drawful. It offers the option of drawing with two colours instead of one and allows you to Tweet out your drawings without stopping the game, along with some other features specifically aimed at streamers.

There is also a new mode included that lets you play using only prompts made up by players. This means you can populate your entire game with in-jokes that only you and your mates will understand.

Drawful 2 is a decent enough party game that has a fair few laughs in it. Anyone with a less than responsive smartphone might struggle with it, and the novelty won’t last forever. But given it costs less than $10, there is plenty of opportunities to get more than your money’s worth.