SK is newb

Hi, one of my friends just recommended a game to me. It’s called Crayon Physics. A small Indie game you can say.

Sounds boring? It is anything but that. The beauty in the game is that you “control” a lowly crayon(which is not all that lowly as you may think). You use the crayon to draw paths from one side to another. There is no concept of a “life”, so if your ball pops off the edge of the screen, it’ll just automatically spawn at the default position of that level.  In the later levels, you draw hinges, levers and anything that you can think of in 2D. As far as I have played, the physics are almost spot-on. The reason I say almost is because there are some ways you can trick the game into doing stuff in a umm…. non-conventional way.

The beauty of this game is in its replayability. I mean, sure you breeze past through the levels the second time almost exactly the same way you did the first time, but then that would defeat the purpose of the game. The game physics shines when you try to create an overtly complicated mechanism for a very simple objective.

It's so simple...or is it?

Once you pardon my drawing skills, you can see from the above screenshot, I’ve just created a very complicated mechanism for a trivial task. And you know what? It works. The sheer amount of creativity and ingenuity that you can put into this game is limitless. Someone else could have easily come up with a different solution to this  level. Heck, I could come up with another completely original solution if I play it after a couple of days.

The background music is very pleasing and unobtrusive. The game UI is strictly minimalist, with only 3 options when you first start (not counting the obvious ‘Exit’ option). The graphics are true to its roots-exactly how it should look like. Don’t let the above screen shot fool you into thinking it’s  flat, dull looking game. Screenshots can do only so much justice. You can mindlessly doodle away on the canvas for hours on end together.

I completed the game in around 5-6 hours. It’s not a very big game by any stretch of imagination, but hey so wasn’t Portal. Overall, this is one of those games which have the charm of being simple and minimal. The easy learning curve and the way the difficulty smoothly ramps up also adds to the experience. If you are tired of all those “big” linear games,  want to go at your pace with a game, and love puzzle games, there is no doubt that you will love this. Others, try it regardless. You never know, you might just love this hidden jewel.