Freakyforms Deluxe: Your Creations, Alive! (Nintendo 3DS) Review

Freakyforms Deluxe: Your Creations, Alive! is quite an interesting concept, borrowing somewhat from 5TH Cell's Drawn to Life, whereby the characters in the game are actually user-created, as is the scenery if so desired. The original idea, from Japanese developer Asobism -- which normally works on mobile phone content -- was released on the Nintendo 3DS eShop towards the end of 2011 and despite receiving a mixed reaction from fans and media alike, clearly actually sold sufficient units to warrant a moderately expanded retail version being produced, one that weighs in at roughly four times the price of the download edition (£19.99 vs. £5.40). That version was a limited experience, with players building up their own formees (creatures are weird or normal, as the player's imagination dictates) from a small selection of shapes and then throwing them into a bland world to wander about using a poor control input and subjecting them to repetitive tasks.

The game takes each player through various tutorials to allow them to quickly become accustomed to the tools on offer for bringing the innards of the imagination to life on the 3DS screen (3D is not of particular use here, so dragging the slider to the off position to save on battery power is more than acceptable). Strangely shaped heads, different heights of legs, crazy eyes and mouths, and plenty of other options are available to make the weirdest looking creatures appear on-screen. Freakyforms Deluxe tries to encourage people to delve deeper into the processes involved by unlocking numerous new steps upon the completion of earlier ones, and even starts to open up more of the game as certain amounts of formees are…formed.

The draw of Freakyforms Deluxe: Your Creations, Alive! will undoubtedly be how the barebones world that can be explored starts to expand, with the formees able to wander around, adventuring to new sectors, meeting other freaks of nature along the way. This is where the quest element comes in, with fruit eating, key collection, and item delivery being the order of the day in terms of requests from other characters, all to be completed within a set time limit. The world around can also be tailored to user preferences thanks to item creation, but the environments in general are extremely average and will not hold the attention of even the younger crowd for long.

Another key matter to mention is how the control scheme, as touched upon briefly before, is entirely stylus-based. A circle sits dead centre on the touch screen, and to walk/run it is a case of dragging the stylus to either side (with varying degrees of success, which is annoying due to the time-based element), plus jumping is a truly awkward process of pulling downwards or diagonally down in the opposite direction of desired flight to then let go and launch the selected formee onwards, normally nowhere near to the platform that needed to be reached, resulting in crazy leaping all over the place, wasting time and building up high levels of frustration.

Mixing in dungeons filled with randomised battling and some new 'Special Actions' to give formees differing attributes for fighting, really does not justify the cost of entry, especially as the specials cannot be manually triggered, leaving everything to feel too automated. Even the one-3DS-card-multiplayer element is held back, with themes being chosen and a mere stage show taking place. There was so much potential to make Freakyforms Deluxe: Your Creations, Alive! a thoroughly better experience than on the eShop, but the developer has actually made it worse by not fixing fundamental problems and then Nintendo slapping a times-four price onto the end product. Oh, and only one profile? Steer clear and opt for the delightful New Art Academy instead.