Draw Something!

My new favorite app for my iPhone is DrawSomething...it's like a Pictionary game that you can play with anyone else who has the app, whether they are near or far. (The app is available for both Apple and Android devices.) I have played with my daughters while we're all sitting on the same couch and I am having lots of fun playing with my colleagues from Twitter across the country!

You start by finding your friends online, and beginning a game with them. You'll need to know their username in the game or their email to track them down. Or, you can link up through Facebook.

Then you get three words to choose from: easy, medium, or hard. (My last three choices were anchor, bookmark, or Golem.) Once you choose your word, you are sent to a draw screen. Use your finger to draw a picture that represents your word. You get a few colors to start with, and can choose skinny or thick lines. You do have an eraser too!

Once your picture is complete, you send it to your friend. The fun thing about this game is that it's asynchronous. Just like with Words With Friends, you don't have to be playing at exactly the same time. You send turns back and forth to each other and play when you can.

The other thing I love about this game is it doesn't just share your finished picture with your friend. It saves a little video of the picture as you drew it, then when your friend is ready to play, the game will show it to them. They can watch your picture appear, and try to guess what it is!

There are 12 letters at the bottom of your screen as you watch the drawing. Once you know what the picture is, you use those letters to spell the name of the object. If you're wrong, you get to keep guessing. There's no time limit, and there are other helps too, such as being able to reduce the number of letters you see, or a button that rescrambles the letters in case you need some inspiration.

Once you guess correctly, you both earn 1, 2, or 3 coins, depending on the difficulty of the word you chose. You can use the coins to buy more colors, or you can add more colors by purchasing them within the app.

The game has been incredibly successful--it spread through a good chunk of my Twitter network in just under a week--and they report 12 million downloads in just a month.

It's quick, and creative, and I highly recommend it! There's a free version as well as a $1 version, but I do suggest that you go for the paid version since the free version seems a little buggier.

And if you want to play, my username is MelJean!