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Marker Man Adventures
By Chad Sapieha,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Drawing-enabled platformer unnecessarily hard to master.
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Marker Man Adventures
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What’s It About?
Beating better publicized competitor Scribblenauts to stores by a couple of weeks, the drawing-enabled MARKER MAN ADVENTURES is a clever platformer that sees players sketching lines, squares, circles, triangles and other shapes to help the game’s titular stick figure hero overcome obstacles and avoid enemies on his quest to find his lost dog, Doodles. Over the course of nearly 200 levels players will draw big boxes to trigger weight-sensitive switches, lines that act as ramps and bridges, circles that will immobilize enemies or allow Marker Man to breathe underwater, and triangles that can shrink our hero in size. The goal in each level is to collect enough gold Marker Man coins to unlock the next level, then make your way to a big white hand that marks the end of the stage, collecting marker pens along the way to replenish your ink reserves, which drain with each drawing.
Is It Any Good?
Marker Man Adventures is the sort of game that ought to be a critic's darling. From its quirky, minimalist graphics -- the colorful world and characters look as though they could have been drawn by a artistically inclined preschooler -- to its inventive brand of draw-your-own-tools play, it would seem that there was no way it could possibly fail. And yet, in too many ways, it does.
The biggest problem is a lack of direction. Players are thrown into the game without being told about any of the specific objects they can draw or how they work. Similarly, there’s no explanation of what the onscreen icons mean or how to go about replenishing health so that Marker Man doesn’t quickly use up his lives and get thrown back to the start. Even once players have figured out how the game works (likely by flipping through the instruction booklet, which is brief but efficient) there’s a good chance they’ll still have a hard time of it, as no guiding strategies are ever provided. Make no mistake; this is one challenging physics-based puzzler. It can be fun, but it’s a shame that it’s been made so inaccessible.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about games that help foster creativity. Marker Man Adventures lets players figure out for themselves what they ought to draw to overcome obstacles. The upcoming Scribblenauts employs a similar concept. Can you think of other games that let your imagination run wild? Games that allow you to create vehicles or design levels? Are these games more satisfying than those which lock players into a set selection of traditional moves and abilities?
Families can also discuss accessibility. What makes a game easy to learn and play? In-game tutorials? On-screen instructions? Well-written instruction books? Which method of instruction do you prefer? Is it better for a game to let players discover certain abilities on their own? How long will you play before deciding a particularly difficult game just isn’t worth the effort?
Game Details
- Platforms: Nintendo DS , Nintendo DSi
- Available online?: Not available online
- Publisher: Majesco
- Release date: August 25, 2009
- Genre: Adventure
- ESRB rating: E for Comic Mischief
- Last updated: August 31, 2016
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