Comic Coloring Book

Genre: Art Application

Players: 1

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Review:

Comic Coloring Book is a family-friendly free-to-play Art Application released on Nintendo Switch in 2020 that includes 12 drawings from a cartoony comic story for users to fill in, with the option of buying up to 24 more, as well as the ability to draw on a blank canvas, if they pay extra for the ability to do so.

The drawings here are fairly simplistic in look, and players who don’t care for the four central characters featured within or the art style used to depict them will find there isn’t really another option here. These comics feature a young boy and a young girl, as well as their robot and unicorn friends, and as you color them in, you’ll be hearing background music that’s a dull and repetitive instrumental theme.

Players only have access to a very limited array of tools and colors. There’s a watercolor tool that lets players fill within the lines of one part of the comic like drawing with a marker, a pencil, a brush, a crayon, a spray paint can, an eraser, a paint bucket, and a reset button that clears the entire artwork of color. Add to this only twelve colors to choose from, and that’s it. There’s no undo button and no way to change pen/pencil size, both really disappointing oversights. You also can’t zoom in or out on the image.

In addition to this, there are some odd choices this game makes. The paint bucket tool only recognizes the lines that are already in the comic, meaning it will fill in color right over any drawing you’ve already done, whether you wanted that or not. Additionally, nearly all of the comic panels already have an element that’s already filled in (the boy’s red cape or the unicorn’s colorful horn), and you cannot change these colors.

The gamepad controls here work okay, but the cursor moves a bit too fast to control at times, and you can’t adjust its speed. The touchscreen controls work well enough, but trying to press the on-screen buttons to select different tools or colors can be finicky and require multiple taps.

Overall, Comic Coloring Book is an underwhelming Art Program with clunky controls and a serious lack of decent tools. While it may be enticing for the “free” price tag, the lack of variety in the free version and the inability to create your own art really limits any potential the free version provides, and if you want to consider paying to get the limited expanded content, this game has to contend with Coloring Book, a similar program that does have a wide variety of content, does include a blank canvas to work with, and is free to play. It’s hard for me to recommend this game over that one when Coloring Book not only offers better value for money (or for no money), but also simply works better and does more. That is, unless you specifically like the cartoony comic-style art the game lets you color in more in Comic Coloring Book. For most players, and most parents of aspiring artists, Coloring Book (without the “Comic”) is the better way to go.

tl;dr – Comic Coloring Book is a family-friendly Art Application that lets players color in drawings in a cartoony-style comic. The free content here is lacking, and pales compared to other offerings on the eShop, the tools on offer here are limited, and the controls are clunky. I have trouble imagining who would want this game over other better choices on the Nintendo Switch.

Grade: C-

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