Doodle Invasion deserves props for its hand-drawn, throwback presentation. At a time when HD is being trumped on the iPad as a reason to revisit old games and move off smaller, non-HD screens, Doodle Invasion lets its 2D flag proudly fly. The animations range from more detailed alien creatures to literally stick figures. Tapping on anything will result in some animation, even a NPC lifeguard who is ogling a stick-figure girl on the beach, who falls out of his chair when touched. The sound effects are equally awesome. You've got screaming girls, exploding munition, alien spaceships, all the components of any good 'B' movie production, basically. As new aliens are introduced, each has a unique style, and both human and alien characters are animated smoothly throughout the game. If you're a spectator for a game of Doodle Invasion, it's a real treat. For the actual players, not so much...

Once the novelty of the graphics wear off, Doodle Invasion is little more than an interactive screensaver. It frustrates regularly with some of its touch implementation, which is an issue with mechanics, but the gameplay is equally fraught. At the end of the day, you are really just drawing lines on the screen to divert aliens away from your beach into patrolling boats. With an image of Missile Command in mind, you've pretty much got the picture. It doesn't amount to much more from a complexity standpoint, and the line-drawing mechanic isn't terribly well done. New types of aliens and defense techniques come and go, but you'll still find yourself madly drawing lines of buoys and pushing them around. Once enough aliens pile up on the beach, it's game over. It's not that the gameplay ideas behind Doodle Invasion are completely off-base, but something else was needed here. It feels like the beginning of a game that is missing any further buildup.

Drawing lines on the screen doesn't sound hard, but there are a few constraints placed on you that make Doodle Invasion an exercise in frustration. Lines can't extend across the entire screen, and they don't do anything in their own right. The only reason you draw a line is to corral a group of aliens and move them toward a boat. The problem is that the boats are constantly moving, so just drawing one line and moving it doesn't cut the mustard. You have to look at oncoming aliens (vertical), moving boats (horizontal), and estimate the length of line you'll need to draw, the proper angle, and the amount of oncoming aliens. Factor in that drawing lines right on top of aliens or boats doesn't work. Plus, some aliens will break or go under your lines. This all ramps up so quickly from the beginning of the game that younger players will be stumped within just a few levels. It's a shame that a more gradual progression wasn't mapped out, because Doodle Invasion feels like it's in its endgame mode within about three levels...

To further complicate things, Doodle Invasion has some iffy touch controls. We get that the developers had to account for lines that were drawn right on top of the action, and that they tried to limit the number of active lines on the screen. This means you'll draw lines that don't materialize and find older lines erased when you start drawing new ones. The combined effect is that you'll end up with more aliens on the beach than you intended. A sustainable strategy seemed to be drawing short (both in length and lifespan) lines early, and moving them into oncoming boats. The problem is that masses of aliens spill over the sides, forcing you to draw more lines, which just erases your old lines... If it sounds confusing, it's because the mechanic just isn't sustainable. Beyond all this line drawing, you're supposed to be tapping friendly boats to fire missiles, tapping alien spaceships to destroy them, and occasionally tapping friendly watercraft that have picked up alien hitchhikers. Somewhere along the line, a few of these elements should have been more static, or the pacing of the entire game should have been modified. Instead of a fun, casual experience, we mostly found ourselves frustrated and missing the "fun" part of Doodle Invasion.