Critical Play: Skribbl

Skribbl.io is a web game based around drawing. I have no idea who published it! 

Players take turns choosing from a set of three words to draw. They then use a canvas on their screen to draw an image of whatever word they chose! Other players try to guess the word they are drawing. If they get it right, they get point based on how quickly they guessed, and then the person drawing gets points based on how many people guessed it right! Therefore, there are point incentives both for guessing well and for drawing well. 

This game is incredibly simple and easy to pick up, yet incredibly enjoyable. The game being on a website is the only reason the points system can work, because it would be incredibly hard to scale the points by the amount of time the guess took if it were played in a physical medium. However, it is really difficult to draw stuff on a mouse or trackpad. But in my opinion, the lack of quality in drawings contributes to the fun, and provides an incentive to make your drawings simpler. 

The only issue I find with the game is that it isn’t particularly social at all. It is fun to guess, and you can make fun of your friends bad drawings, but after a little bit of time drawing bad drawings and trying to guess what they are gets a bit boring. Compared to a game like apples to apples or cards against humanity, there isn’t nearly enough humor to get me to keep coming back to skribblio. 

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