In Drawn to Life, players take the role as the "creator," the unseen deity that's called on to restore a cursed land filled with snow and waste. As the creator, it's your job to design a hero (literally), take to the lands, and begin restoring the world one piece at a time. The game blends core gameplay of action/adventure with platforming, being inspired from games like Mario and THQ's own previous platformer titles. Players will defeat baddies with a variety of weaponry and tactics, as they slowly restore the land to its previous greatness.
When kicking the game off, players will be prompted to literally create their hero. In creation mode, the bottom screen takes the role of something like the old-school pixel-pushing program D-Paint, with hard lines defining the collision of your character regardless of how it's drawn. Think of it as an invisible frame for your character. Players can either take template designs and color them (combing torso, leg, arm, and head pieces together like a virtual version of Mighty Men and Monster Makers), or design entirely free-hand, drawing and shading down to the pixel. If, for example, you want to create Mega Man, Richter Belmont, or Mario as your main character, it's entirely up to you. If instead you want to create a Mii-like version of yourself, that's also open to you. It's entirely free-form, and that's the beauty of Drawn to Life.
At times, however, you'll hit areas where part of the world is missing. The game literally pulls you from the action and into the creation tool (which by the way, offers shading, drawing, brushes, zoom, and a ton of pretty complex stylus optoins), and prompts you to draw new assets for the game. This can be something as simple as a cloud, or as complex as a giant whale which will later act as a platform for an auto-scrolling level. Like the player creation, boundaries depend on the specific task. Some are as simple as coloring in the lines (adding a 3rd eye in the process perhaps?), while others are entirely an open canvas for your creative pleasure. Sometimes your creations will be used right away, as you'll literally see your creation plop into the world in front of you, while other times you'll draw something and later see it "snuck" into the world. It offers some great "Oh wow!" moments, as the game definitely makes your creations into art. Interesting at the very least.
