Depict vs. Charadium, Which Do You Like?

[jamesj3k]

Depict (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=340772215&mt=8) and Charadium (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/charadium/id345571667?mt=8) are both free for a limited time. We'd love to hear what people like / dislike about both.

Looks like December is Pictionary-like game month! We released Depict (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=340772215&mt=8), there's was another one called Draw (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/draw/id325402952?mt=8), and now Charadium (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/charadium/id345571667?mt=8) is out.

We'd be curious to know what people like about each. Depict is a little different compared to Charadium, mainly because there is no typing and all the puzzles are multiple choice for faster, smoother play. We also went with OpenFeint over Plus (only for time reasons). We're still debating moving to Plus+. Which do you guys think is better?

In our opinion, Depict and Charadium are the two best drawing games in the app store. Get them both!

[BrettArchibald]

I haven't tried Depict. As it's multiple choice though, what's to stop a player rapidly mashing all the buttons and get the right answer first this way, before the other player has even drawn anything?

[jamesj3k]

You only get one guess per round and the rounds go quickly. You have to balance guessing too soon and waiting too long and not getting as many points.

[nake]

Charadium is amazing, but theres some serious connection issues

[jamesj3k]

That's always a developer's worst fear- that there will be server issues on launch day. I'm sure they'll get it resolved.

[da shiz wiz 19]

SO far I like charadium better, but it has been annoying today. Keeps putting me in some crashed game lobby. Yesterday it was wroking like a beauty though

[Gryphon23]

I'm gonna have to say Charadium. Psyche. Depict is my personal favorite (for real). I just love the simplicity and retro feel to it.

[derek420]

Depict.

[da shiz wiz 19]

Well it looks like I need to play depict more...

[MidianGTX]

Do they both support multiplayer on the same device? Depict seems to, but I can't tell with Charadium.

Edit: alright so neither of them do :p

[BrettArchibald]

Having played both of these games for quite awhile now, I would say that although they have some similarities, they each have their own unique appeal.

They are both really great games, and I can't say one is better than the other, and I would instead say to anyone that they should get both. :)

[heffdog116]

Charadium is amazing, but theres some serious connection issues

I agree. Great game and I had my whole family d/l it. But 2 of us were trying to play right next to eachother and it was the laggiest game I ever played on my phone. We tried wifi with 3g off, than 3g with wifi off and had issues still. Shouldnt be like that for local play

[mitrezom]

I agree. Great game and I had my whole family d/l it. But 2 of us were trying to play right next to eachother and it was the laggiest game I ever played on my phone. We tried wifi with 3g off, than 3g with wifi off and had issues still. Shouldnt be like that for local play

Ironically lag is one of the reasons for the look/feel of Depict.

We went with the pixelated retro feel cause it's much much easier to send a small amount of data across the planet every few seconds than sending a complete animation every few milliseconds.

Course, it also introduces some great gameplay elements.

Such as, it's harder to draw really detailed stuff, so it keeps the rounds quick and fun without people having to worry about drawing the perfect stickman.

It also levels the playing field between really experienced players and n00bs. My smiley face looks pretty much exactly the same as a new guy's smiley face :).

You wouldn't think that it's a big deal, but the fact my 3 year old niece can draw a "dog" and people guess it right says something about the overall gameplay being easy and rewarding.

Anyway... lots of thought went into this "simple" game. It's great that our initial gameplay decisions are being enjoyed. It's a bit of a gamble releasing a Pictionary genre game where you don't type and don't draw crazy detailed drawings on a 2 min timer.

"Quick, Fun, & Easy" was the motto for this game and I'm glad everyone is enjoying it as much as we do :)

[Ravenblack]

I like Charadium better.

I found it hard to draw in Depict's pixel style (big pixels just makes even ordinary things hard to draw or make them look strange) and the multiple choice answers, although they don't make guessing any simpler, it sort of limits what people can guess, which is what's fun about pictionary games.

In Charadium, you type in your answers and it makes for some very funny answers and hilarious moments. It's a great pity that Charadium often has connection problems and lag.

[BrettArchibald]

I found a problem in Depict: If I get the last word wrong, in round 5 of 5, then I don't get told afterwards what the correct word was.
In rounds 1 to 4 if I get a word wrong, then I am shown what the word was meant to be.
On the 5th round though, in the space where the answer normally would be shown, there is instead just a message saying that the next game will be starting soon.

P.S. Can the game be set to remember our chosen avatars between sessions?
And is there any chance we could draw our own in-game? ;)

[mitrezom]

I found a problem in Depict: If I get the last word wrong, in round 5 of 5, then I don't get told afterwards what the correct word was.
In rounds 1 to 4 if I get a word wrong, then I am shown what the word was meant to be.
On the 5th round though, in the space where the answer normally would be shown, there is instead just a message saying that the next game will be starting soon.

P.S. Can the game be set to remember our chosen avatars between sessions?
And is there any chance we could draw our own in-game? ;)

We're adding in the wrong answer for the 5th round in the next update.

We're going to update the avatars to stay between games. Just something we thought people wouldn't care about keeping since it's so easy to change, but we'll just add it in for fun.

Drawing your own avatar....... yes, it's on our mind... we'll see :)

[fallqvist]

I must say that depict is amazing. I havent tried that other game but i think i would like depict more anyway, because it's so simple and clean, all necessary things are there!

although it's only on English...which of course is very obvious, but I really can't be arsed to translate all words for my little sister. Ever thought about translating all words too more languages? Heck I could even help you translate them for free to swedish. I believe that would help you get even more sales.

*I'm on my iPhone right now so there might be some spelling mistakes.

Thanks

[appfreak]

I'm sold with Depict. The visual style and the gameplay makes it different from Charadium, since I'm not too keen on typing when playing. I think part of the fun is trying to guess between the choice given when the drawing is bad

[Anthony Charadium]

Hey James!

It's really nice to meet you here because we were really surprised and somewhat scared when we were pending approval on the AppStore and saw your game live a couple of days before ours :)

Thank you for your warm feedback!

In the first couple of days our servers were really overloaded because we were not able to test it with such huge amount of people, but now it all looks fine, and the lags users experience are caused either by their connectivity or some client issues on the iPhone. From time to time some devices start lagging really bad when other devices on the same wifi network are fine. Only waiting or rebooting the device helps, re-launching or re-connecting does not.

We faced the problem in the early stages of development and haven't yet figured out what it is. This happens on the long-lasting push connection Charadium keeps open with the application server and does not seem to affect short outgoing requests.

[jamesj3k]

Hey, nice to meet you too! You can imagine our surprise seeing your app launch right after ours. Too funny. I sent you a PM if you want to chat about technical stuff outside the forum.

[BrettArchibald]

Grrrr!!! Charadium is "experiencing some connectivity problems" and is "unable to contact any of its servers" apparently.
It just stays on the "loading" screen indefinitely after I dismiss the error message when launching. :(
I wanted to play a bit of Charadium today as I was playing Depict yesterday.
Aah well, I guess it's back to Depict again today, but that's no bad thing. :)

For reference, the time I'm not able to connect to Charadium is 8:15/8:30 GMT / UK.

[Anthony Charadium]

Grrrr!!! Charadium is "experiencing some connectivity problems" and is "unable to contact any of its servers" apparently.
It just stays on the "loading" screen indefinitely after I dismiss the error message when launching. :(
I wanted to play a bit of Charadium today as I was playing Depict yesterday.
Aah well, I guess it's back to Depict again today, but that's no bad thing. :)

For reference, the time I'm not able to connect to Charadium is 8:15/8:30 GMT / UK.

There were some problems on Plus+ authentication servers for about 20 minutes. People who were logged in by that moment could play Charadium fine (our servers were up all the time), but no new players could log in. It was fixed really soon.

[Acidbottle]

ahh for me charadium edges it, the drawing side is much more flexible and i had a tough job creating anything that could resemble the item in depict.

the only thing id like to see changed in charadium is some of the words. trying to draw some of those is quite a task ;)

[heathenpoet]

Depict for me. I really like the retro, pixellated style, and think that it's a restriction which not only gives it a much cooler and more coherent design, but adds to the challenge of the game. :)

[MidianGTX]

ahh for me charadium edges it, the drawing side is much more flexible and i had a tough job creating anything that could resemble the item in depict.

That's the point. It even mentions it in the game.


the only thing id like to see changed in charadium is some of the words. trying to draw some of those is quite a task ;)

That's the point too... are you on drugs?

[PhagoCychotic]

Played my first round of Charadium and hour ago and my first round of Depict just a minute ago.

I have to conclude that I LIKE BOTH :D

Depict is easier because it's multichoice and that makes it great for quick games. Charadium requires a little more effort but adds the benefit of player personality.

[Acidbottle]

That's the point. It even mentions it in the game.



That's the point too... are you on drugs?

was there any need to be condescending?

FYI, if the point is to create a splatter from some pixels then go ahead and enjoy the game, i CAN (almost) draw so charadium's whiteboard is far more preferable.

furthermore, the dev of charadium also keeps a log of some of the commonly used successful and unsuccessful words so i believe some will be changed. there are not many that cant be drawn but some are rediculous, i think you'll find im not in a minority here.

[Random_Guy]

Charadium for sure.

[jamesj3k]

We're thoroughly confused. Depict and Charadium both have almost all 5-star reviews in iTunes, but both also have a surprising number of 1-star reviews. What's up with that?

I suspect people are deleting the apps off their phones and giving them 1-star, but why?

[derek420]

Probably just because its not their kind of game, people are stupid and will just 1-star for no reason at all sometimes.

[jamesj3k]

I kinda figured that to some extent, but not like this. Oh well, I'll try not to take it personally :rolleyes:

[derek420]

Lol that'll be your best bet ;)

Most of the 1 stars are probably for the people that it supposedly always crashes for, or its too hard, or its not fun, or they didn't like something trivial. It happens :p

[cmsy27]

Each one has its own charm. I love that Depict makes it easier to guess with choices but at the same time harder because the choices are so tricky and are mostly related to each other - plus it's hard to draw too finely because of the brush design.

Charadium gives you the freedom to guess whatever you like but makes it challenging since only the first person who gets the correct answer gets credit.

I'd like to see rooms in both though, and of course the ability to pick which room you want to join.

[jamesj3k]

This is a feature that might make its way into Depict at some point. For the initial release, we figured people either just wanted to play and didn't care who they played with, or else they would start a game with friends.

[Frog]

I've only tried Depict yet and I really liked it, I play it at least one time a day, but sometimes nobody is online. That's really irritating.

About the Plus+ vs Openfeint issue, I think Plus+ is better, because you can than add a friend mode (like Eliminate Pro has). Or is that also possible with Openfeint.

[Will090]

I love depict but have not tried Charadium. Depict could use some bluetooth multiplayer though

[jamesj3k]

The next update (after the one we recently submitted) will have the ability to friend people in-game.

No one's online ? I've never seen it dip below 5 people. However, I suppose it's possible that if you were the 6th person, you could have been placed in a room by yourself. If this happens, chill for a while and then try again.

I'm curious to know what bluetooth multiplayer would offer over the current form.

[derek420]

Bluetooth has never worked on my Touch so its not a feature that I'd request :p

[cmsy27]

This is a feature that might make its way into Depict at some point. For the initial release, we figured people either just wanted to play and didn't care who they played with, or else they would start a game with friends.

That's great news. :)

[derek420]

James will you guys be integrating the newest version of OF in the update?