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Of all the things you could simulate with a computer - flying a fighter plane, driving a Ferrari, etc - 'doodling with a pencil and paper' seems a bit silly. In Pictionary, this is provided by a crude art utility, enabling the creation of circles, rectangles, curves and lines, as well as free-hand drawing.

As in the board game, the aim isn't to produce an artistic masterpiece, but to represent a given person/place/object/action well enough so your team-mates can guess it. To prevent them cheating, each word is given only by an alphanumeric code to look up on a special sheet (miniaturized to fit into the budget packaging).

If the word's guessed correctly, the die is rolled and the team's counter moved round the board to another subject square for a repeat performance. The aim is simply to reach the finish first.

If you haven't got enough players to form teams, an alternative mode of play enables individuals to compete, guessing computer-drawn pictures. You can "buzz" in at any time to anticipate the answer ('can you tell what it is yet?').

The team game is by far the best, and it really takes some doing to draw something like 'New England' within the (alterable) lime limit - especially as the drawing functions are on the slow side. Though it can't compare with scribbling away madly on a piece of paper, Pictionary's still good fun to play with friends of family.