There’s no doubt that the word “Crayola” can elicit the fondest of childhood memories. Surely such a wonderful thing as coloring with good old fashioned Crayola crayons will make an equally fabulous game, right? Not so much. Crayola Treasure Adventures is perfectly suited for the DS. It’s also perfectly suited for a very specific demographic of small children. That said, you might be disappointed to find that just about anyone over 8 years old can probably finish the “Adventure” portion of this game in about 15 minutes.
Crayola Treasure Adventures stays inside the lines as a solid title for any small child’s DS library. But its components, when examined under the scrutiny of the critical gaming world, paint a less colorful picture. In the realms of graphics, storyline, playability, sound and entertainment value across the board, it’s really nothing more than an average "point-click-drag" casual experience.
The Adventure portion of the game takes you through three different environments, including a Jungle and a Desert area to start out. Throughout the entire map, you’ll need to complete various activities to progress. Keeping things simple, there are only three kinds of activities. The stylus is used for all functions in the game. The first is a puzzle, where you’ll simply drag puzzle pieces into position to create the finished landscape picture. Next is a numbingly easy connect-the-dots drawing game requiring you to point at special objects in the scenery and draw them back into place. Finally, you have the coloring game. Rubbing the stylus over a black and white drawing, you have to color each section of the image, but the actual colors are automatic.
Here’s a synopsis of the storyline: Thieves have stolen the colors from the world and it’s your job to color your way through three distant lands to recapture them. The Adventure Mode storyline is clearly not the backbone for Crayola Treasure Adventures. This, in my opinion, represents a glaring flaw in a game aimed at children. Kids love the imaginative, colorful world gleaned from wonderful stories. Eschewing such wonderment from a tot’s colorful gaming experience makes for an eyesore.
The graphics are reasonably decent, but then again there isn’t much to judge. There is virtually no animation or dynamic graphics of any kind. Still images with panoramic movement across the scene comprise each location visited in the Adventure mode. The top screen shows a cute Crayola crayon character who gives you hints and tells you what to do. He’s also the sole method by which the storyline is driven. Each environment you visit also has a little animal friend of some sort who accompanies you through the level, also quipping its hints from the top screen. The colors are the best part of the graphics (as well they should be in this case). Aside from some pretty colors and nicely drawn scenery, the graphics just aren’t anything special.
Nor is the sound, in fact. To be fair, the music in the game is well suited for the adventure. Lively, familiar beats will appeal to most children and it’s not obnoxious. But most of us will be muting the volume within a few minutes. While it is evident that care was surely taken in constructing the soundtracks, the forgettable and very repetitive tunes fall just short of an otherwise delightful component. Sound effects are relatively weak and you won’t miss anything in turning them off, either.
Crayola Treasure Adventures offers a very simple pick-up-and-play interface that works well for all the various elements in the game. The playability is smooth and responsive, with the coloring activities representing the driving force of the game. In fact, some of the “boss battles” may actually thwart those who have underestimated the speed required in coloring the pictures. But coloring in the adventure mode only serves as a tease for what I consider the highlight of the game: The virtual coloring book.
With enough effort in adventure mode, you’ll earn “treasures” for your coloring book in the form of additional crayon colors and pictures. With total of 120 virtual crayons by which to color a total of 110 pictures, you can scribble to your heart’s content in a quite delightful touch-screen coloring book. The addictive and charming aspects of a coloring book and a big box of crayons have been ported well to the virtual format. The childhood staple is represented smartly, and if there’s no other reason for trying this game, you shouldn’t miss the coloring book.
Overall, I must offer a bit of acclaim for Crayola Treasure Adventures. While it may not be the most entertaining game, even for the kiddos, it has all the right elements with the right balances. I just can’t shake the feeling that it could’ve gone beyond the “fair” or even “good” ratings and excelled into a realm more befitting of the big name on the box. Still, it’s a good value for the price point, and the fun-loving flair comes largely from its approachability and simplicity. Especially if you’re new to the DS, this game might be one to check out as a novelty. Just don’t try to color on the screen with an actual crayon -- I promise the stylus works better.
