Bakushow-Challenge your friends

Right from the start let me make this clear, if you only possess one DS do not buy this game, it has no single player functionality at all, you will be wasting your money.  Of course if you have DS owning friends that you play regularly with you can buy it because it supports up to four players with the need for one game cartridge.  Let me also make it clear that this is only the game that you make it, there is really no innovation or fancy gimmicks here, this is user created to the extreme.  So, now you know all that let’s get down to the nitty gritty and I will tell you what Bakushow is all about.

The DS comes with a pretty good piece of software built in called ‘Pictochat’, where you can send and receive text messages and drawings with very little fuss, but beyond that it’s uses were limited.  Many games have offered a different Pictochat experience but not to the extent of making a game from it.  In steps Bakushow, the most glorified Pictochat application you are ever likely to see, but that is not too bad a thing at all.  What you have is an interface that allows 2-4 DS’ to connect and challenge each other in what ever manner you deem suitable, you can set questions, draw pictures or make up puzzles.  One person acts as the host and poses the challenge, which can then have a time limit imposed, and is sent to the other DS’.  Players then use the touch screen to write/draw what is required, once the time limit is nearly up you click on finish and wait for the others.  Once everyone has done their thing everyone can vote on who did the best by viewing all entries and assigning stars to who they think deserves them, at this point you can change the host and do the same again.  Basically that is it, Bakushow is a game where, quite uniquely, you make up the rules and playing style, it really is as much fum as you want it to be.

I played it with my seven year old daughter and she seemed to like it but I got the feeling that she bored of it quite quickly as it’s not really anything that we haven’t managed to do on Pictochat.  That aside though we did have some fun with it, it’s good if kids are learning to read/count etc it’s also good to see what challenges children can come up with, at one point she drew a penguin skeleton!  One of the best ways to play we found was to draw a scribble, which can be copied on to the touch screen, and see what we could turn it into, I managed a horse and she managed our dog.  I imagine with four people playing it could have a greater longevity as the varying questions would keep everyone going, I found myself struggling with what to do after an hour.  The interface is very basic and easy to use but maybe suffers from a lack of options like colour and text, however this ensures that children can use it with ease.