You are not just a simple kid drawing. Doodle Adventure of Chameleon can change the world on demand to make a puzzle-platformer hybrid.
Cube of Cube has not fully released a game yet. The studio released a demo for the game multiplayer party game Let’s Patiti! In that, you play a cat chasing each other in a sort of tag. The studio also doesn’t have much of a presence online, lacking an official website or social media. The team seems to be based out of China, though it is not clarified if the studio is in the mainland, Hong Kong, or elsewhere. Their publisher, Edigger, is a bit more known but still small. They have curated other indie titles like With My Past and Shadow of the Ninja.
Doodle Adventure of Chameleon is a side-scrolling platformer. Its most striking feature is its pencil-drawn aesthetic. The first few maps appear in this style, harkening a feeling similar to games like Super Paper Mario and Scribblenauts. Later stages take on a feel of 8-bit game systems or multi-colored chalkboards.
You take control of Chameleon, a color-changing drawing inside a young boy’s notebook. You can rapidly change colors between blue, yellow, and red. When you do so, objects of the corresponding color switch between tangible and ethereal. This allows for creating platforms and opening passages. But it can also cause hazards to suddenly become deadly.
The color-changing gimmick of Doodle Adventure of Chameleon goes beyond just the in-game stages. The menus themselves are color-coordinated as well. You can play a sort of mini-game by rapidly switching between parts of the UI and seeing how background characters react to blue, yellow, and red appearing in their way and then disappearing.
At first, the story seems relatively innocent, traveling in the boy’s drawings for the first chapter. You will later spring to life in the classroom and the family living room. But things turn more sinister as the boy is stuck waiting at school and the strange graffiti begins to torment the child. Then, out of complete nowhere the boy ages into a man working a dead-end job and is filled only with dread. He becomes the antagonist looking to erase his childhood memories and it is up to you to bring him peace.
As a puzzle-platformer hybrid game, it should have comfortable and responsive controls. Doodle Adventure of Chameleon makes no use of the mouse and relies on the keyboard for movement. You have the choice of using either WASD or arrow keys for movement, but they cannot be changed. By default, J-K-L changes to the colors of Blue-Yellow-Red, respectively. Jumping is done with the space bar, and a quick dash is accomplished with left-shift. Additionally, you can force kill yourself with the R button.
This control layout is less than ideal. If you do use arrow keys, the color control buttons are far too crammed together. You at least have the option of rebinding the latter to be closer to the dash button. Additionally, there seems to be a limitation where up, left, and space cannot be pressed at the same time. This isn’t an issue early on, but in later stages, certain objects will be inaccessible.
There isn’t really a full tutorial in Doodle Adventure of Chameleon. Instead, a picture is displayed in the background showing which button performs actions. Some of these are clear, like jumping or changing colors. However, some are a bit more muddled and harder to understand at first.
One such picture is of an equation: “exhausted chameleon plus star equals dashing”. However, picking up said star doesn’t make you dash. By watching older previews, it appears that there used to be a dash HUD in the upper right corner which would turn transparent if you just dashed. The mentioned background image seemed to be intended for this now missing interface.
The color-changing aspect of Doodle Adventure of Chameleon is a partial puzzle and also reflexive. You often have to shift colors mid-fall, possibly multiple times to avoid death. In one instance, being in yellow form was needed to access the floating launch cannon, but firing out of it would slam directly into yellow spikes. You had to be in blue form by the time of impact, and then quickly swap to red form to land safely.
This is all confounded by dying from any one hit and being reset back to the start of the current map. It doesn’t matter if it is spikes, enemy attacks, falling, or some other obstacle. It feels like this is to make the game punishing like Super Meat Boy, but the respawn always plays an animation that takes too long to get back to the action.
As you advance in levels new mechanics are slowly introduced. This can include doors that need keys to be collected to unlock, wet paint that you can swim through, and white paint that destroys nearby enemies. In the fifth stage, there are also gray sadness titles that will stay in pace no matter what color you become. Instead, you must pick up painter pallets to bring color back to the land, but only for a limited amount of time. Some puzzles require you to switch between color and darkness, while others are races against the short duration.
Each “section” of a chapter serves as its own little challenge, unrelated to what came before it and what is next in the chapter. This means you do not need to worry about bringing items along or finding secrets. However, sometimes the camera is the biggest threat. It doesn’t move high or low enough to show hazard and you often need to make blind leaps of faith.
After the first two chapters, there is a lack of arrows or signs pointing towards the correct progression path. You could have done all sorts of jumping to reach the top ledge, only to realize it was the middle opening that led to the next map. It is also unclear what symbolizes checkpoints. At first, it seems logical that it would be the bus stops crossed in the first zone, but these are unrelated. Is only after exiting out of a chapter and going back into the menus that you can learn what constituted 25%, 50%, and 75% of the level.
Each chapter of Doodle Adventure of Chameleon ends with a boss fight, though it feels a bit out of place. Chameleon has no form of attack on its own, and it can be jarring to figure out what the mechanic for the encounter is. In one you had to wait around for paint to eventually spawn, then dodge and climb up to the ceiling to have it automatically “wrap” around the boss. Repeat this five times in different puzzle sequences and the monster would eventually fall.
There are apples scattered around chapters as a form of collectable in Doodle Adventure of Chameleon. It is not enough to just collect the apple. Instead, you must also finish its associated sequence to be recorded in the total. This makes it rather annoying to get a trickier apple, and then lose it to some other obstacle. Collecting enough apples will unlock mini-games with their leaderboards at 30, 60, and 90 totals.
At 30 apples you gain Flappy Chameleon, a clone of Flappy Bird. You must travel from left to right without slamming into spikes or falling to the ground. The color change aspect still applies, so you will be changing often to make it passed the various traps. At 60 apples you unlock Only Down, which places the Chameleon at the top of the map as different platforms rise. If you stay on one too long it will crush you against the ceiling. Finally, with 90 apples you get Up, which is the opposite concept – the Chameleon is down below and must avoid hazards as you ascend in a hot air balloon.
Outside of the three mini-games, there isn’t much more gameplay to Doodle Adventure of Chameleon. You can collect even more apples for completion’s sake, or to unlock every Steam Achievement. The game also records your deaths per chapter, with the option to wipe all existing data. If you want, you can master every level until you can clear the game without dying even once. Note that clearing data locks the three mini-games, but still keeps your online leaderboard score.
What results is that Doodle Adventure of Chameleon doesn’t have replay value. The amount of longevity the game contains depends on how hard the gameplay feels to each individual. Some might take weeks or months to beat the five chapters, while others might blow through it in a few hours.
The music and sound design are serviceable but rather unmemorable. It is in a cute 16-bit style but begins to loop after around a minute and a half. Some sound effects also seem to be lifted from – or at least sound similar to – other video games. Picking up items is nearly a dead ringer for gaining an extra life in Kirby Super Star.
Doodle Adventure of Chameleon has a lot of challenges, but feels awkward to play with the default controls. With some key rebinding, it can be more manageable. But, is the frustration worth it? Before diving into the game at full price, consider trying out the demo on Steam. It includes the entire first chapter. After finishing it, you can better make a call if Doodle Adventure of Chameleon is the right fit.
