Bottom Line: A nice, inexpensive app for older children (and their adults!) where the object is to see how fast you can identify the drawing as it happens.
Doodle Duel is a one or two person game where the iPad is the master artist, and the players try to guess the drawing. With over 50 doodles to guess, each drawn from a different angle each time, this app has a lot of play in it.
When I first got this app to review, I was giddy with excitement. As a new convert to the very popular Draw Something, I was hoping this would be a similar game, with pass-and-play for multiple players. So, I was momentarily disappointed when the app itself did all of the drawing. It didn’t take long to get over that disappointment, though.
In the one-player game, the user plays three rounds, attempting to correctly identify the doodle (out of six choices) as fast as possible to earn points. The doodle is drawn with a red pencil, and it is much harder than it seems, even with the choices. A car looked more like an elephant to me at first, and a computer could have been a rocket ship, until the drawing was complete. When complete, the drawings are detailed and realistic.
In the two-player game, the number of rounds is selected--best of three, five, or nine. As the game starts, both players have the same six choices listed on their “side” of the iPad. The drawing happens in the middle. Each player tries to be the first to guess the drawing correctly, but once a choice is made, it can’t be changed. The winner of a round is the first correct answer, and the winner of the game is the player who wins the most rounds.
I used this game with elementary students; it would also be appropriate for students in middle school. We had a lot of fun guessing the drawings, and the students practiced visual perception, along with a lot of impulse control—guessing early is not always the best strategy! They found it motivating, and it was quick to play, both necessary components of a good therapy game.
There were a few small problems with the app. First, in the one player game, you must enter your name before playing to get on the leaderboard (why couldn't it ask me my name after I scored 994 points?) Also, sometimes the random selection of drawings means the same drawing happens twice in a row. The image is drawn from a different angle, and with different strokes, but it was still a lot easier to guess the second time.
There were also a few little grammar errors that irked me. In the score on the single player game, it is listed as “Heather score.” Coding the possessive shouldn’t be that hard. In another place, it reads “Lets find out what it is…” again without an apostrophe. Thankfully, upon completion of each game the apostrophe is correctly used to name the picture, “It’s a ship.”
Doodle Duel does not require an internet connection to play, and it is safe—the app does link to the Doodle Duel website under the “about” section, but there are no links to Facebook or other social media.
This app isn’t very flexible or expandable—but what it does is very well-executed. The picture selections are all common nouns, the pictures are very clearly drawn, and it’s enjoyable to try to guess. For $.99, it’s a worthy download for a quick and easy, yet still challenging, game.
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If you would like to purchase Doodle Duel please use the links provided. Thanks for your support!
iPad/iPhone ($0.99): U.S. Canada U.K. Australia
This review was completed by Heather Hetler, who works as an elementary school SLP and is a full-time graduate student in Speech-Language Pathology. smartappsforkids.com was paid a priority-review fee to complete this review in an expedited manner.
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