“Batman changing his pants”

Other people are currently obsessed with Draw Something, but I have neither iPhone nor iPad so I’m immune to the contagion. What has caught my interest lately (and time, and energy, but not money) is Drawception. It’s a free browser-based game that combines drawing with Telephone. Their description:

1) A player begins a game with a short phrase – for example, “A cow jumping over the moon”
2) A randomly chosen player then draws that phrase
3) Another random player describes the new drawing
4) Yet another player draws the new description
5) Steps 3 and 4 repeat until 12 unique players have participated
When completed, the participating players can view the often unexpected and hilarious results!

They are indeed hilarious, and the two things that make this possible are a) the fact that it’s random, and the only thing you will see when you click “play” is the drawing or interpretation of the person before you (or a box into which you type a phrase, if you’re starting a new game) and b) it’s timed, so each player only has ten minutes to finish his or her turn. This makes the game proceed relatively quickly. It is possible to skip a turn and not participate in the game that has been handed to you, but most people don’t seem to do this. And most people by far are not skilled artists (though some are astonishingly so), so there’s no need to get caught up in how pathetic your mouse-drawn sketches are. You just read things, draw things, and have fun. Here’s a sample game in which I participated under the name Rillion. The game is still in its early beta, but has been getting all sorts of attention and new features are being added daily– your profile now includes a list of games you’ve participated in, drawings you’ve done, favorite games you’ve seen, people you’re following, and people who are following you.

Oh, and people who insist on drawing nothing but penises and poop, regardless of what the clue was? They get banned, quick-like. In addition to being able to upvote or downvote someone’s drawing/interpretation, you can report them outright for screwing up the game. It’s so much more fun to see people actually doing their best to figure out how on earth they’re supposed to depict the bizarre phrases they were given, or figure out what the hell the drawing they’re looking at is supposed to be.