Reviews

1989 Domark Ltd (UK)
by Oxford Mobius

I was in love with Trivial Pursuit when it came out, both board and computer games (I made clones myself, board and computer), so when I got my hands on Pictionary I was very excited.
Boy was I disappointed. The game is not bad, but the drawing option is so clumsy and slow it really ruined the game for me. Choosing this game to spent an afternoon with friends or family was the quickest away to hear the eldest whining and protesting to turn the TV on and watch a movie instead.
Playing against the computer it's even worse, because it's impossible not to cheat (if you've played it you know what I mean).
Pictionary is not the easiest game to render on a computer, specially on a Spectrum, and it's definitely tons of times better as a board game.

I admire the ambition of having this on computer game form, but it's painfully obvious it doesn't work. It makes the same mistake that other quiz computer games, Trivial Pursuit and Sporting Triangles being two games for instance, that it has you tell the computer whether you were right or wrong, and that kills the fun for me. Also, I can't draw for shit so I just let the computer do it for me.

Some things should really have been left untouched, Pictionary is one of those things. I suppose a drawing game could work and board games certainly work with the right style and design, but Pictionary doesn't for a variety of reasons. The slow pace, the confusing setup, the cheating gameplay, it is badly designed and badly implemented you can't help but wonder why someone bothered to convert it into a program. The fact that a computer version exists is not surprising but did it really need to happen?