Great Concept, Needs more Level Planning or UAT

I really enjoyed this game at the start. The idea that you get to design your own character and scenery had me worried, thinking that with my poor artistic skills every object would be complete unrecognizable. Fortunately, for the most part it's more like colouring inside the lines. You are given a vague outline and you can do whatever you like inside with tools that are similar to ms paint.

Outside of the drawing aspect, the game is split into 2 parts. You spend all your time between levels in a village that you can wander around and explore, chatting to the cute little creatures that live there. As you complete more levels you can walk to more areas of the village and talk to more people. The view is like the wandering elements of the old pokemon games and is fun, but after a while can be tiresome.

The levels are platform based, and you wield your crazy designed weapons to counter foes. This initially was great and passed many a tube ride for me. The levels can be a little monotonous, but they are broken up with trips to the village and it makes for a logical session of around 30 minutes of playing.

Movements are limited in a Mario style way - You can move forwards or backwards or jump. Jump on things heads to kill them or shoot them with your gun. You can only shoot forwards. There are a few really really annoying bad guys who hover just above your shooting line when you jump, and they are essentially unkillable and truly frustrating. There is one particular boss level full of these things that took me and infuriating 2 days to get through. For any of you who have played it was the tree boss not the most heinous experience?

The game is really long and I didn't finish it before sending back. It would be better for kids if the opponents weren't pretty much invincible, but all in all it is a good innovative game.

Use of the ds stylus is great in drawing.