Week of Love: Doodle Date (PC)

Doodle Date is like a visual game of Mad Libs. While in Mad Libs you are prompted to pick words to make a story sound silly, in Doodle Date you are handling the visual component, the player prompted to draw characters and objects to make the story being told fun for them to read. While there only a few moments in total where you do draw the pictures in, Doodle Date bases itself around the idea that your drawings are pretty much creating your story, even though the narrative won’t really change based on what you draw.

The first thing that’s bound to come up in a game all about drawing is how well you can draw. I’m certainly no artist myself, but Doodle Date’s name gives away that you don’t really need to be excellent at art to do what’s asked of you in this game, as the idea is you’re doodling rather than trying to make something of decent quality. To that end, the moments the game prompts you to draw something don’t give you many tools, just a pencil for the purposes of a monochromatic image and an eraser to clear away any errors. An undo option or the ability to add color would allow for better drawing, but it would also break away from the idea that not only are these meant to be images drawn in a notebook, but it would probably shift the focus away from the fact these are meant to supplement the game’s humor rather than it serving as a real drawing platform. While the game has been noted to have some art tablet compatibility issues, keeping the aims simple means drawing with the mouse shouldn’t be too much of a concern, although while drawing it did seem to randomly leave out tiny segments of a line or two that would have to be patched up.

As for the story you’re drawing for, Doodle Date tells the tale of a high schooler whose old journal full of doodles suddenly pulls him into their world, an old drawing named Claire immediately prompting him to draw something for her creator to date. What you draw can’t play too much of an impact on the plot in general due to the freeform nature of being able to draw whatever you please, but the plot is written to still react to your art in ways that can make for some good humor. Whether you’re drawing a recognizable character or some kooky invention, something detailed or something just barely above a scribble, it’s pretty easy to provide some art that makes for an amusing story. The plot itself is told in a similar manner to a visual novel save for the prompting for images to act as characters or items, and there are a few choices here or there to make to impact how characters act or which of the two characters you end up dating, your creation being the one with the more focused route to pay off for all of your art investment.

For the most part, Doodle Date’s story exists as a series of excuses to get you drawing something and then seeing some silly reactions to it, but the game does construct a decent tale towards that goal. It’s not really much of a realistic or interesting romance, but its writing works well for its main goal of making the player laugh. It is a very short game even counting playing through for the different endings, but there is a nice touch where if you play again, it will save your drawings from last time in case you want to use them again. You can delete them and draw a new dream date if you wish, but retaining your old images can make exploring the few divergent points a bit easier and get you new content. Most of your images are devoted to your dream date after all, such as giving them different reactions for the many conversations you’ll have, and while the game does prompt you for some sultry images, it’s on the player to determine how steamy their art gets. I ended up drawing a baseball cap wearing rattlesnake with wings as my dream date, so despite my budding romance with the unusual concoction, there was never a point I had to push into uncomfortable territory with them if I so wished.

Oddly enough though, despite a clear focus on humor, the game does dip into a few dark areas with its plot. While there’s nothing really gruesome or disturbing awaiting you, Doodle Date doesn’t ignore the fact that a human being is being pulled into a world where their creations can come to life and this character is almost god-like in their capabilities. The story ends up going into some unusual territory with this, but it’s not like it ever twists off into horror with its embrace of the concept, and in fact, getting a bit more serious at times can even lead to some moments of black humor where your drawings are placed into story beats with a different tone. The game doesn’t really work to get the level of investment going in the romances where odd swerves would potentially disappoint a player much, so perhaps the only thing really holding things back is how few drawing prompts there are and a few moments that aren’t quite as fun or interesting. Sometimes it can be hard if the game is even telling a joke due to its visual novel trappings, such as when you go to a movie with your date and end up drawing an image for the film. Unsure of where you’re going to go with that basic prompt, the reactions after the film’s creation are all very broad, and while it’s almost a joke in itself that the game has to use such basic descriptions, it’s hard to tell if it’s an intentional one. While the backing music for the game in general is actually pretty good, there aren’t any sound effects to back things up, so the game saying “movie noises” repeatedly as its description of your film’s audio side is either genius joke-telling or just a weak band-aid for an incredibly open situation they couldn’t plan for. It also makes me wonder if the entire concept of the game is some satire of visual novels in general, being that visual novels are pieces of art created for the enjoyment of players who find the characters drawn for them attractive. It doesn’t dive in too deep with that idea of it is the intention, but it is an interesting extra layer of interpretation to approach Doodle Date with.

THE VERDICT: Doodle Date is a joke you and the game work together to tell. Using the simple design of a dating simulator, the game asks the player to fill in images meant to make that player laugh, the text reactions and situations the images are used for doing a good job of facilitating some funny moments. The plot is quite clearly constructed around the idea of amusing the player rather than giving too much meaning to the events or dating, but it does do some unexpected exploration of the concepts behind one creator drawing a character to life for the purposes of romance.  Not really demanding any artistic skill, Doodle Date is an effective skeletal structure for setting up some silly moments, making it a game about having a laugh rather than having some deeply involved dating story or a well developed art platform.

And so, I give Doodle Date for PC…

A GOOD rating. Humor is certainly subjective, but Doodle Date puts a lot of the humor in your hands, making a framework for you to create some silly situations to laugh at. Unlike Mad Libs, it does put in more effort towards creating the plot, and while this does mean that it perhaps is lacking more opportunities to draw something humorous into the story, it does give some of the joke-telling room to breath and allows there to be a more coherent plot guiding your images. Besides dipping into the exploration of its creation themes though, most the writing exists in service to the main push of the game, and that allows it to achieve what it’s going for, that being a short humorous tale of you dating whatever your mind and mouse cook up.

While Doodle Date might be better served in a package of drawing games with other stories with different set-ups and themes, it’s not really going for the book of Mad Libs route. It’s a framework for a bit of light-hearted humor and some dark humor too, and while it’s hard to say the doodling or the dating is really substantial, the angle of making it all for laughs makes Doodle Date a nice and easy way to amuse yourself for an hour or two.