Though Big Fish Games is best known as a casual games portal, its internal development studio has been busy working on a new point-and-click adventure called Drawn: The Painted Tower, which will soon be ready for release.

Following the success of the hidden object/adventure game hybrid Mystery Case Files: Return to Ravenhearst, the team at Big Fish set out to create a title that would appeal to casual game fans yet be "truly a point and click adventure" this time. The result is a game that sends players on a quest to save a child queen from atop the dangerous "Painted Tower" in a dark and dreary world, solving puzzles and entering magical paintings full of fantastic characters along the way.



The first screenshots and trailers display the game's distinctive art style, which Drawn's Art Director Brian Thomson describes as "off-kilter and skewed", contrasting the dreary, hopeless "real" world with the rich worlds of paintings born of imagination. And in the words of Producer Chris Campbell, "the higher we go in the tower, the more the rules are thrown out", from giant statues of snails to rooms in a stone griffon's mouth.



The game's casual orientation comes primarily from its shorter projected length (and lower cost) and user-friendly features like a dynamic, objective-based hint system that even adventure gamers will appreciate. As for any other differences from more traditional adventures, we won't have to wait much longer to find out, as Drawn: The Painted Tower is scheduled for release some time later this week.