Crayon Physics Deluxe

Crayon Physics is a puzzle game in which you are armed with a crayon and have to guide a ball to the star using the power of physics and your imagination. The basic crayon graphics work well for the game because it looks like a child's primitive drawings on some crumpled recycled paper.

It's a game where there are multiple solutions, and you can be extremely creative if you have a great imagination. You are free to draw any sort of complex shape you like, and objects can be attached to pins that are already on the paper, or you can draw them yourself (pins are simply a tiny circle). Attaching a single object to a pin will make the object swing around the pin like a pendulum, which is useful for hitting the ball like a club. If you attach a single line between two pins, it becomes a rope which you can use as a bridge or to try to bounce the ball. You can also nudge the ball by clicking on it, but you can create a similar result by drawing an object to fall onto it.

The main aim is to get the ball to touch the star, but your solution can also be classified as an Elegant, Old School, or Awesome Solution. Elegant is achieved by only drawing one object and without clicking on the ball. Old School is no clicking and no pins, but you can draw more objects. Apparently you cannot draw objects under the ball, but I often got this solution by doing so. With Awesome, you have to judge yourself; you just manually mark the solution as Awesome to achieve it. Obviously, you can be boring and just mark all your solutions as awesome, but its a good system for those people that want to make something really creative. Your solutions are recorded so you can admire your solutions at a later date.

The levels are represented on a map, grouped by several islands. As you progress, you are introduced to new concepts, and you will be utilising different types of physics; using ramps, pulley systems, harmonic motion, rockets and gravity.

Even though the main focus is on physics, the actual physics system is surprisingly ropey. Even though swinging objects can't pass through background looking objects like the Sun, they can easily pass through what looks like solid ground. Sometimes the collision detection is off when objects have moved, and so the ball just hovers over the landscape. Often the physics just completely fail, and the objects will get stuck on nothing, or jerk suddenly.

There is a level creation feature which is nice touch, but it can be quite challenging to make a level that is great to play.

When you put too many objects on a screen, the game either crashes, or gives you a message stating that you broke the game. It might have been best just to cap the amount of objects you can draw rather than allowing this to happen.

It's hard to put your finger on exactly why the game seems boring. It's probably because you will most likely have the same mind-set for completing the puzzles, so it's hard to replay them and come up with new solutions. By venturing to YouTube, you can discover some really elaborate solutions, but unless you have a similar level of creativity, you will probably just stick to the boring solutions. At £15.99, it does seem a bit overpriced for quite a simple game, given that there are great puzzle games for around a third of the price.