There are games created to simply make money, there are games created simply to go viral on Youtube. There are also games that are created, with the most innocent of intentions, to just be a game. Draw a Stickman EPIC is certainly the latter, and for that I give them credit as it’s becoming harder and harder to find a game you can just buy once and play all the way through. Unfortunately, this is where the positive points about the game end.

The game will start you off drawing a rudimentary stickman which you will then guide around a series of levels in a top-down view, looking for the exit to unlock the next one. The levels can branch in different directions, meaning that you could end up unlocking a different level depending on which exit you took during your time playing the last one. Each level has various environmental puzzles that can be solved by drawing a specific object to use such as drawing an axe will let you chop down trees.

The premise seems solid, but the final product will put you to sleep. Now that you’re vaguely familiar with the gameplay, let’s discuss what’s wrong with it. For starters, the drawing mechanic is kiddy-pool shallow. There are roughly 5 different things you can draw, in addition to the axe you can also draw fires, rain clouds, thunder clouds and keys. If you thought it would be a game like Okami where you draw bridges to progress, or Scribblenauts huge selection of drawings, you’re out of luck.

Drawing keys is completely redundant, it’s not a puzzle to put a key in a lock, it just wastes time to keep having to draw them and they simply aren’t necessary. Additionally, each thing you can draw has its own pencil. The game isn’t smart enough to know what you’re actually drawing, so it determines what object you’ve drawn based on the pencil you’ve chosen which brings up the question, why do you have to draw the object at all? You can draw anything from a straight line, to a Salvador Dali replica but if you did it with the “axe” pencil, it will only ever see it as an axe.

The next thing wrong with the gameplay is how monotonous it gets. One stage in particular stood out with this, where you had to use a key operated robot to plough through a wall. No clues were given on this, but there were a huge number of chests, barrels and boxes around, and yes you had to just keep breaking them all open one at a time until you found the right one (by drawing an axe, which breaks after 3 swings and needs to be drawn again). Once found, along with finding the control box in a similar way, you needed to use keys to turn the robot in 90 degree increments until it was facing the right direction (keys, again, get 3 uses before you need to draw a new one). Additionally, you needed keys to operate the control box to make the robot move forward, then turn it yet again after it moves to re-align it with the target. Dull as a butter knife, because it’s obvious what you have to do, it just takes so long to do it because of having to redraw all your tools, but then why couldn’t you have just made it so the robot can be turned around without keys at all?

This is the main issue the game has, in fact. Everything is so straightforward, but it’s made difficult and more time-consuming from having to stop every couple of steps to “draw” something. You can’t move while drawing, so it’s essentially little more than padding so that the game will last longer than 30 minutes.

Poor level design ensures that tedium is never far away, with most puzzles boiling down to destroying everything you can, looking for clues in the environment (such as using a lightning cloud over a gravestone with a lightning symbol on it) then clicking on any interactive objects until you find the exit. The best way to describe the gameplay is like a point-and-click adventure with no plot… or colour.

The graphics are abysmal and I don’t buy the “it’s the style” argument. If you set out to design a game that looks like this from the start, then you probably should have changed the concept before you began working on it. Justifying bad art does not make it any less bad.

Each level is a static, flat image completely devoid of colour or artistic talent. Everything that moves does so with animation tweening of a single frame in the same way bad Flash animations do. This would be excusable if any of these actually looked like some effort had been put into drawing them, but no. The style dictates that everything has to look like it was drawn by a 5-year old, but it’s not even doing that right, it looks like a game drawn by a grown man to LOOK like the drawings of a 5-year old.

Draw a Stickman EPIC barely qualifies as a game, being the digital equivalent of those baby toys with shapes that fit into specific holes. And just like those toys, I cannot possibly recommend this to anyone over the age of 3 due to choking hazards.

Pros:
~Doesn’t crash very often

Cons:
~Grotesque graphics and animation
~Painfully repetitive gameplay
~No replay value
~More time spent in the pencil UI than solving puzzles
~Drawing mechanics have the depth of a pancake

This is actually quite an entertaining game so long as you're creative and a solid artist. I was really entertained playing this up until I accidentally saved a charactr that looked awful and was agitated seeing this abomination constantly on screen.

I drew a ♥♥♥♥♥ which set bushes on fire

I created Phil Fish and lost Zoe Quinn on my way to find Fez.

I chopped down beautifully decorated christmas trees with a gigantic, childishly drawn wiener whilst wearing nothing but a fedora and a "sweg" shirt.
10/10

I burnt down a tree with a drawing of Obama's face that took me 40 minutes

I drew a D-I-C-K instead of a key and it worked like a charm

This game is absolutely fun and hilarious! I've played both the Android and PC versions; each offers their own bit of fun while keeping with the story. My favourite thing to do is draw myself and then draw one of my friends as the person I'm going to save. Play this game; it will make your day infinitely better.

This game was amazing.
Made my friend a giant rock.... Cause why not.
Named him Wert.

Went on an adventure where I slayed Zarp.

And hopefully there are more levels

Overall 8.9/10

Draw A Stickman Epic is a cutsy game that is trying to be appealing to all players but will you be charmed ? In this game you create a charecter and you pal who gets taken away by an Evil King Zarp and its up to you to rescue him. So how is this game ? Its actually a really fun game with a lot of replay value. In the game you have to travell through diffrent levels and in those levels you have to solve puzzles to get to the next stage. The game has diffrent types of pens that you need to use to solve puzzles Keys, Axes, Fires and Rain pens to be exact. The game also has multiple level exits so you can go a diffrent path all together. Also there are Colour buddys and Puzzle pieces to find in every level so you can find them and unlock some stuff for the game. The game has a few minor issues. The game is quite challenging for a kids game and plus some of the controlls are hard to use at first but overall a really fun game that all of you should check out. I give Draw a Stickman: EPIC a 7/10

Great adventure where you draw yourself, draw the person you're going to save, then the tools need to do so. Simple fun gameplay that keeps you wanting more. Drawing the initial characters was one of the highlights of the game and I would have liked to see more of that in some form. Not sure of many other games where you can go on an epic adventure to save Alyson Hannigan (The person I drew to save).

Full Review

10/10 found the lost booty

It's funny game... 3/5
You can do what you want :)

A port from mobile devices — not that interesting to play on PC.

I bought this game for 1€ from a Humble Bundle, got 100% in all the levels on the phone in about three days and then did the same on the PC. Loved it all the way through. The fact that you actually draw your charachter and the ``damsel in distress`` is really great, and drawing your own tools just makes it even better! The art style looks great, the story is nothing special but the gameplay is really fun. If you wanna draw genitalia everywhere, you can! If you want to play this seriously and actually draw the tools properly, you can do that too!
The only things I felt missing were a better port for the PC, (the controls are pretty much the same as in the mobile version, except that you can move with WASD) and also the ability to save your drawings and use them multiple times instead of drawing in again every time wold be great. Overall, this game is amazing and I totally recommend it! Especially if its on sale.

You can draw what ever you want 100/10

One word for this game, EPIC

gud game.

Decent little game, my 3 and 5 year old love playing it

Draw a Stickman: EPIC was a wonderful experience from start to finish. I could see the game being not only great with children, but also adults looking for a simple and creative outlet. I enjoyed EPIC with five close friends gathered around to make jokes and generally enjoy how bad at drawing we each were. Fun for 5 minutes or 3 hours. It never even got old for a group of people playing at the same time.