What is Skribbl.io?
For this week’s critical play, I decided to analyze Skribbl.io. Skribbl.io is an online multiplayer game, developed by Ticedev, in which players take turns guessing (and sometimes judging) each other’s drawings! In my opinion, Skribbl.io is much more enjoyable with a larger group of people but it is possible to play with a minimum of 2 players while the maximum is 20. Players that choose to create a private room can customize several parts of the game such as the number of players, language, drawtime, rounds, word mode, word count, and hints. Giving users the freedom to change the game by customizing any of the aforementioned features is an aspect I really admire about this game. Including such tools for customization is cool because it gives players new ways to play the same game! Players are able to challenge each other in new ways by, for instance, lowering drawtime to an almost criminally low time of 15 seconds or they can make the game more fun and personal by adding custom inside-joke types of words/phrases.
Deep Dive into Game Play
Now, let’s get into the actual game play. In each round, one player takes the role of the “Artist” and the other players are the “Guessers”. At the start of the round, the “Artist” gets to pick a word out of 3 to go ahead and draw. Within the time limit, the “Artist” must draw their word and the “Guessers” must place their guesses in the chat. The first person to guess the drawing gets the most points and the number of points for each correct guess after that decreases. The “Artist” gets points for every correct guess. After each round, the roles rotate. The player with the most points at the end wins! The structure of rounds is so simple that people of all ages can easily pick it up with a couple rounds under their belt. With that being said, I think the target audience of this game is people in their teens and up. After each round, the word selection gets more brutal with some words requiring really creative and/or elaborate drawings. The game assumes that both the “Artist” and the “Guessers” know the word which might be too much of an ask for players under 13.
The Power of MDA
Skribbl.io is a perfect example of just how powerful game mechanics are. On the surface, Skribbl.io is a straightforward game with a very simple premise. However, it is much more challenging and, as a result, much more fun than it lets on. One mechanic that contributes to this is the game’s mechanic of using our laptop’s trackpad as our canvas and our far from fine-tipped, imprecise fingers as our drawing medium. Having such limited options for drawings is great because it levels the playing field. It helps people who aren’t great artists (like me) get out of their heads about making the drawing look perfect or even good for that matter. It also encourages players to think outside of the box! This mechanic and dynamic of having to think words and the world in different ways truly fosters the game’s aesthetic of creative expression. For example, when I was the “Artist”, I chose the word “spring” and immediately regretted my decision. In the first 5 seconds, I thought about how there was no way I had enough time to make a sunny, floral scene that could capture the essence of spring. So, I sought and alternative way of thinking and chose to draw a spiral to represent the other meaning of “spring”. Shoutout to Skribbl.io for giving me an excuse to cut corners and call it creativity! To continue, the chat is another great mechanic present in the game. The chat allows you to see the guesses of other players as well as when they guess the correct word. The game follows a multiplayer structure where everyone is fighting for themselves and the chat truly adds fuel to the fire. Players are able to use the chat to see how other people are interpreting the drawing and can use that information to better inform their guesses. This creates a multidimensional dynamic between players given that you could be potentially giving other players an advantage without wanting to simply because your guesses are not private. The game’s mechanics work to transform the game from a seemingly simple drawing and guessing game to something so much more complex, fun, and engaging than that!
