I've been meaning to get my hands on Doodle God as it has received some fantastic reviews. The summary on iTunes made the game sound like a cross between Sim City and Spore:
"Doodle God puts the power of creation in your hands. Mixing and matching different elements, work your way up, all the way from bacteria and beetles, to clay and ceramics, to tools, weapons and beyond.”
Feedback from other players was to set aside a few hours because that's how addictive the game is. So I cleared my calendar for two hours and was beaming with excitement as the game slowly loaded.
Ten minutes into Doodle God and I soon realize that it's completely different to what I had thought it was. Rather than an action game, Doodle God is a bit similar to those card matching games. Except all the cards are facing up and you're not trying to match identical cards. Instead, you have to use your brain a bit more and try to figure out what cards should go together.
You start off with just four elements: fire, water, air, earth. Each element belongs to a different group. The goal of this game is to unlock the 21 groups containing 196 elements in total. To create a new element, you will have to combine two elements together. For example, water and earth creates swamp. Fire and air creates energy and so forth.
The first few minutes of the game can be quite interesting as most elements react with each other and I would be unlocking various elements very quickly. Soon I had a group of supernatural elements like vampire, zombie, dragon and ghost. And like others, I found it amusing when I unlocked the sex element by combining two humans together. Don't worry, if your kid is playing this game and you don't want them unlocking "naughty" elements, you can turn on the parental controls.
Nothing really happens when you create an element. Just a quick animation, a British voice along the lines of, "Congratulations," and a pop up of a random proverb or quote. You can't really do much with the elements except to create new ones.
You're meant to apply some spatial thinking to Doodle God, but like most people, I just end up monotonously dragging one element onto another and hoping for the best.
Every three minutes the hint icon lights up. I can select the single light bulb where it tells me what new element I create and I have to think through what the two elements could be. Or, I can choose the double light bulb where I'm given the elements that will react with each other and I simply try to figure it out through trial and error.
I'm not going to criticize Doodle God too much as it's an innovative concept. However, I can't say it really deserves the four- and five-star ratings. When the novelty wears off, there's really not much to the game and gets pretty repetitive and somewhat boring. If you get tired of trying to find new elements, there are tonnes of cheat sheets floating around the web.
Pros: Great graphics, interesting concept
Cons: Very repetitive, not much of a game
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