Drawer

Over the last 40 years, we've seen racing games come in all shapes and sizes. Some have four wheels, others have two and even fewer have none at all. Sometimes they take place on the water or in the sky, while other times you're racing across a regular old dinner table. From tightly contained courses to epic open-worlds, it can often feel like we've played every type of racing game under the sun. But I don't care how hardcore of a race fan you are, because I guarantee that you've never played one like Drawer. It's a clever new game that chooses to kick us out of the driver's seat, opting to focus more on pre-race planning than fancy steering. What could all this possibly mean? Well, I guess you'll just have to stick around for the review to find out.

You won't need a fancy steering wheel or prior experience to be good at Drawer, because the only thing you need to master in this new racing game is the ability to draw a line. That's right, a line. You see, this is a game that is all about drawing out a path and watching the car go. The only steering you do is when you draw out twists and turns on the graph paper, hoping for the best when it comes to dodging obstacles and making it to the finish line.

In some ways this is both a lot easier and harder than you might expect. The nice thing is that we're given a picture of the course as we draw the line, so it's not like we're going in blind. We also know where the start and finish lines are, which is extremely helpful when it comes to creating a path. But even with all that help, it's hard to draw the turns and keep your car within the narrow lanes. You'll likely have to redraw the line multiple times in order to find the perfect path and earn one of the trophies. In that sense, Drawer can sometimes feel more like a puzzle game than a traditional racer.

When I tell you that you don't have any direct control over the car when it's driving, that's not entirely true. While you can't steer or get off the path you've drawn, we are given a limited amount of control over the speed to make things a little fairer. That is to say, you can pull the emergency brake to slow down around tough corners and use a nitro boost to speed up during straight stretches. This can help you fix some of your bad planning on the fly, but don't feel like you can rely on these speed adjustments, because you only have a few seconds to complete each of these levels. If you can get to the finish line in time, you'll open up a new stage and come one step closer to mastering all 37 levels.

Click For the Full Picture Archive

These different tracks are all contained in four different areas, each with their own backgrounds and obstacles. For example, there's a challenging Christmas-themed stage at night that will force you to avoid traffic, as well as a tropical setting where we're driving on sand and jumping over pools of water. You'll also have to avoid hay bales, dangerous cliffs and even cows standing in the road. A lot of this is tough to anticipate just from looking at the picture, so seeing the race play out is often key when it comes to mapping out the right path.

What's especially cool is that sometimes you can cheat the system by ignoring the road all together. There was one stage that took me 15 seconds to complete, yet I couldn't help but notice all of the people on the leaderboards were finishing the level in a fraction of that time. I quickly realized that, if I was a little lucky, I could cut through the forest and skip nearly ten seconds of the course. There are a lot of shortcuts and secrets for those who aren't afraid to experiment. That adds a new dimension to the game, especially when you're trying to fight for leaderboard supremacy.

Unfortunately, there are a few problems that keep this clever idea from achieving its full potential. The biggest issue is the length, which is a bit on the short side. I was able to beat the 37 races in a single sitting, which left me wanting more levels and locations. The good news is that once you've finished the four areas, you'll unlock the ability to play through them again in a mirror mode where everything is reversed. That's fun, but I would have preferred a couple more settings.

Click For the Full Picture Archive

And it's not just the locations, because this game also needed more variety. It's not that the game needs more obstacles, but rather that it needs to make better use of them. I was surprised that traffic wasn't a thing until the final stages, and even then, it only pops up once or twice. Same with the hay bales and cows. Most of the challenge comes from figuring out where to draw the corners and staying within the lines, but I wish they would have incorporated these elements in more of the tracks. That's a big missed opportunity.

It doesn't help that a few technical problems prevent the action from playing out how you planned. I found that sometimes the car would completely ignore the path I drew and go rogue, which usually meant doing donuts and ramming into trees. The game would work perfectly one moment, but every time I retried the race without drawing a new line, the car would simply ignore my wishes and do its own thing. That was easy enough to work around, but the developers of will definitely need to fix this bug.

The good news is that even with some technical issues and short campaign, I had a tremendous amount of fun playing Drawer. I think a lot of this came down to giving me an experience I've never had before. It made me look at racing games in a new light and gave me hope that clever developers can still come up with something new and fresh. I also liked the look and especially the music. The soundtrack is legitimately great. This is a fun little package that may be over too quickly, but that's not going to stop me from recommending it to anybody who likes to race ... or draw lines on graph paper.