by Burbie52, HSM team writer

This week’s update has brought yet another new concept into Home, doodling. Now I am sure that all of you have doodled in your time, while talking on the phone or during a particularly boring meeting or class in school. We are all guilty of scribbling something, somewhere at some point in time. You could say that doodling is a universal phenomenon, or at least a world wide one.

While some of us are more artistically inclined than others, doodling is something we are all good at, since it has no real artistic merit, nor does it need to be good at all or even look like anything. But that is where this particular game changes things. In Lock-a-doodle, you have to create something quickly to represent a particular item or idea. It is very like a game I have always enjoyed, Pictionary. You are given the tools to create from scratch a picture to represent what you are being asked to draw, then your friends need to guess what that thing is. There will be rewards associated with the game from what I understand.

The game

You can purchase the game separately for $6.99 or even have it gifted to you from the gift machine for a tidy 512 coins. It also comes built into either the club skin or personal space you can purchase for $6.99 each. There are many bundled packs available as well which offer either all or part of the add-ons that are available now to add stickers and other colors to your choices. All of the stickers in these packs are based upon existing Lockwood product lines, like Sodium, Jewel of the Skies, and Springtime. There are more packs to come in the future and you are given the option to actually buy them ahead of time in the highest priced bundle for $28.99.

There are a few drawbacks though (pardon the pun), for one the game takes up twenty seven slots in your inventory if you purchase it separate from the personal space or club, where it is a built in feature. The other drawback is that you can’t play the game at all unless you own one. This means that if you own the club skin, your members won’t be able to utilize the game unless they own it as well.

I like the concept of the game itself very much. It lends itself to the creative streak many people have hidden inside and the more that we can use that in Home, be it by creating outfits to wear or decorating our personal spaces or playing a game, the better. This game has added a new dimension to that by letting us draw anything our hearts desire. I just wish that the drawings were able to be saved and transferred to our XMB photo stream so we could display them in our spaces elsewhere without using the game to do so.

The personal space/club skin itself is a very whimsical place. Think Toy Story gone artistic. It has huge windows with a glimpse of the outside world and very tall bins holding paints and the like. There is a wall of colored pencils in one corner and a staged area where your gallery of creations is displayed on a series of wall-mounted screens. These screens alternate form one creation to another to show your work. It has spilled paint all over the place  with actively dripping tubes of it everywhere and puddling on the floor and is extremely colorful to say the least. Whoever works here is a bit messy it seems. There are huge markers and tubes of paint and all of the furniture you buy for the space is over-sized as well to fit the motif.

There is a furniture bundle available for $8.99 which contains quite a few items to make your space more artsy. They include a huge paint brush can and palette as well as a paint set, paint tubes and a sketch pad. While all of these fit the space, I don’t see why they are necessary if you are just into the game itself.

Rewards and furniture

There is a reward for your guests here – a shirt (of course), but it isn’t just your usual t-shirt. The girl’s is a longer regular shirt with colorful paint splotches on it, and the guy’s is a splotched t-shirt under an open green smock/jacket. The owner of the game get rewards for a variety of things, such as sending a friend a request to play the game. These are generally avatar items like a beret (how can you be an artist without one of those?) and hand items like a brush or palette.

I love the new concept that Lockwood has done here, it opens up a lot of doors for different ideas to come in. It is good to see developers think outside of the box, and this is a great example of that.

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2 Responses to “Lock-a-Doodle, Lockwood’s New Idea”

1. KookyNikki says:

   April 20, 2013 at 6:01 pm

   Yes I got it but no one on my friends list got it so I can’t play with anyone which is frustrating. I feel like I wasted my money.

   Reply
   • SealWyf_ says:

     April 20, 2013 at 6:59 pm

     Send your friends invites, or gift them with the game from the Gift Machine. Or, you can play with strangers until you can lure your friends in.

     Reply