The recent release of the fantastic, creativity-fueled Scribblenauts has likely scared developers into stepping up their games with a multitude of “draw-your-own” characters, levels, and environment titles hitting shelves, one of which is the quirky Marker Man Adventures for the Nintendo DS. On the outside, especially with the title, you would assume that this is a game that should allow an abundance of freedom with what you’re able to draw and how you interact with your environment, when in fact you couldn’t be more wrong. Despite its good intentions Marker Man falls short of the, well, mark in every sense of the word.

From what I could gather from the short opening scene, a cute “marker man” who is essentially a black stick figure is playing around in the back yard with his dog. Doodles, the dog, goes missing and it’s up to you, Marker Man, to find him and bring him home! After an extremely brief animation, your plunked deep into the heart of the game with no instructions whatsoever. Not even a simple tutorial level is included to help aid you in your quest to return Doodles home. Without any knowledge regarding your abilities or limitations you need to resort to trial and error in order to make any headway, which is already a strike on this game - gamers are not always going to want to consult manuals for rudimentary gameplay instructions, so why not at the very least explain how the title works when buyers start it up for the first time? 

If you take the time to delve into the manual or simply play around enough, you’ll finally discover that the drawings you can produce are severely limited. Enemies can be trapped within small circles, and certain geometric shapes drawn around your Marker Man will gift him with several different special abilities. Other than these uses, you can’t truly interact with your game like you can with Scribblenauts or even Drawn to Life for that matter.

When you have such limited of a scope to draw things with, the fact that levels are poorly designed do not contribute to the game’s success. Terrible collision detection and imprecise DS touch controls ensure that your frustration is endless. Often you’ll attempt to draw navigational lines to no avail, and other times you’ll want to make a jump to a ledge that seems as though you could reach, only to be dismayed by a glitch-laden surface that you can’t quite hop over.  

The several puzzles placed throughout the game require some simple problem-solving skills, though the freedom you’re given to solve the puzzles is limited. With each new shape you draw, Marker Man’s health is reduced significantly. With only three lives provided, you’ll find that dying can be a rather quick affair, especially since trapping enemies can only get you so far. Taking into consideration that the game depletes your life force when shapes register incorrectly, it becomes nigh-impossible to solve some puzzles when the game’s controls simply refuse to cooperate with you. 

Even the environments within the game seem to work against you. In some cases you’ll slide easily down drawn ramps, and in other cases you’ll be stationary with no result. For a game that is supposedly created with an impressive physics engine, I can’t tell that the physics are based off of this world’s physics.

What’s worse is that far too often you can hardly discern what is an enemy from a friendly encounter, and NPCs that seem as though they wouldn’t harm a fly are some of the deadliest of all. It doesn’t help that once you lose all three lives you must start again from the beginning of the level, making the game an absolute nightmare to wade through if you aren’t careful. Even if you are careful, the shoddy controls and glitchy stages make it tough to complete to begin with.

If you’re looking for a title that embraces your creativity on the Nintendo DS with titles like Scribblenauts or Drawn to Life, Marker Man Adventures most certainly isn’t it. While it’s an interesting idea with adorable presentation, it fails to deliver in so many aspects that its difficult to recommend, even when forgetting its sharper and more creative competitors and budget pricing.  The console seems tailor-made for charming adventures like these, and perhaps a forthcoming sequel could clear up all its faults, as I really wanted to see this game succeed.  I guess it’s back to the drawing board!