With THQ's new uDraw GameTablet peripheral out last Friday, you might be wondering what other games you'll be able to buy in the coming weeks, when you've ran out of Dood's Big Adventure, played Pictionary to death and filled up an entire SD card with doodles from uDraw Studio. Don't worry about the releases drying up though - according to our interview with the Project Manager for uDraw, we've been assured that there's "a robust software plan for the next few years" - and that plan, it seems, begins with this.
SpongeBob SquigglePants, is a collection of over 100 short mini-games that make use of the uDraw GameTablet in lots of different ways, and is aimed squarely at fans of the TV show. Similar in concept to the WarioWare games, if you've ever played those, you'll be given a brief instruction for each game, before having a matter of seconds in which to do whatever it asks you to.
From what we played, these range from drawing circles on the GameTablet to spin a fan, to shaking the whole GameTablet up and down to shake sand off a buried SpongeBob, to keeping the GameTablet as still as possible, lest a boulder falls and squishes poor old Squidward. Before each game, you'll be shown an incredibly brief animation showing what you need to do with the GameTablet in each game - although, perhaps it's not as clear as it needs to be, as it didn't stop me failing abysmally at them the first time through. As you progress through the sets of mini-games, they become faster and faster - though I died before they had chance to really get going.
Flipping patties as SpongeBob RoboPants is surprisingly difficult...
Of course, after playing a series of fast-paced mini-games, you might want to wind down a little - and following the uDraw game trend, SpongeBob SqigglePants offers you a gallery where you can draw, paint and colour in SpongeBob and his friends from Bikini Bottom, before displaying their art in the Bikini Bottom Museum of Art.
For SpongeBob enthusiasts, the game features a load of different art styles from the depths of the Nickelodeon vaults - for example, PixelBob pays homage to the world of 8-bit video games and Comic Book Bob sees all the characters in their super hero forms. If that's not enough, the entire game is hosted and narrated by Patchy the Pirate, the TV series' stereotypical, corny, comical pirate, who'll lambaste you, or praise you based on your last performance.
SpongeBob SquigglePants is due out on April 12th, priced at around £19.99. We're sure to have more info on it and the other uDraw games coming soon - so make sure you keep checking back!
