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Crayon Physics Deluxe - Indie Drawy Fun, OUT NOW
LewieP
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Crayon Physics Deluxe is a physics based puzzle game made by Kloonigames aka Petri Purho, a one man indie developer.
The tech demo "Crayon Physics" won the coveted IGF Seumas McNally Grand Prize in 2008, beating other finalists Audiosurf, Hammerfall, Noitu Love 2: Devolution and World of Goo.
Screenshots:
Although to get a proper idea of how it plays, you really need to see it in action:
Trailer 1
Trailer 2
The Soundtrack is freely available here.
It is out now, and costs $19.99. You can buy it direct from Kloonigames here. Early Tech Demo is here. Demo here.
Early reviews/impressions:
The game is structured in a fairly traditional manner. You start off on island no. 1, which has a X number of levels (puzzles is probably more appropriate), and you have to get Y number of stars from the puzzles to move onto the next island and there is always some margin of error between X and Y for those individual puzzles you can't solve.
Each puzzle has stars for you to collect, initially just one star per puzzle, but later there is sometimes more. You collect stars by creating stuff with a magical crayon, that takes on the physical form of it's appearance. Draw a box, it will bounce, slide, and have weight, momentum and friction appropriate to it's shape. Same for a circle, or ropes and pulleys. You then have to use that stuff to move a red ball around the puzzle towards a star.
If it sounds complicated, it's not, and there are nice on screen tutorials that offer just the right amount of guidance without feeling invasive whenever a new technique is required. At it's most basic, Crayon Physics Deluxe is a game of cause and effect, action and reaction.
The difficulty curve is pretty shallow at first. It is a very forgiving game. Even if you mess up completely on a puzzle, a quick press of the space bar resets it all. Since the puzzles are only short, you generally don't mind experimenting, since you won't really lose much progress if the experimentation is unsuccessful. I also like that once you have gotten the star(s), nothing else matters, your construction can all fall apart, the ball can fly off the screen, anything can happen, and long as the red ball touches the star, you have succeeded.
Now I would say that the biggest missed opportunity in Crayon Physics Deluxe is in the puzzle design. A lot of the puzzles are solvable in more than one way. In fact, pretty much all of them are.
There is the 'correct' way, which will often be elegant and simple once you know how, and it can be really rewarding working these solutions out.
The other way is to brute force it. Hash your way through it and you'll probably get the ball to the star without too much difficulty. Either using what I guess are limitations in the physics engine, or just dumb trial and error.
The problem is, you often don't know which of these you are doing until you've practically solved the puzzle. I wish there was more clues as to whether or not I was on the right track to finding the more elegant solution. Maybe if there was some kind of reward for having achieved the more intelligent solution, even just a little feedback to say "you have mastered this level, you can now move on" would be great, but as it is, the player is left guessing whether or not the have mastered a given puzzle, and for me, that really detracted from me wanting to perfect the levels.
Problems aside, the puzzles is more than enough to put a smile on your face. It can really make you feel clever.
It's technically impressive. It looks, feels and sounds like something a 5 year old digipen graduate might come up with, and that is entirely meant as a compliment. I've got plenty of time for games that look like no other games on the market (excluding direct clones of it of course).
Much has changed since the version that won the Seamus McNally Grand Prize at the 2008 Independent Games Festival. What was formerly a collection of about 30 challenges from a simple menu are now part of a much more realised game. The game's 80 or so levels are arranged in a series of islands, navigated by a child-like drawing of a boat. Collecting enough stars opens later islands, with most levels completed in your chosen order. There's also a lot more you can draw and create. As mentioned, string now works, and there are no limitations on the obscure shapes it can animate, meaning you can add useful notches onto your rectangles, and so on.
Quite a few levels raise a laugh at first sight. A number contain extremely frightening stickmen, who wobble in a peculiarly unnerving fashion, obeying the physics that rule the rest of the game. It can be a lot of fun disposing of these figures, tying weights to them and seeing them fall off the edge of the world. Or you could use them to solve the level in more imaginative ways. In one level your ball begins in a man's belly, requiring the opening of his flip-top head to progress. If only this sort of theme had been more fully explored, rather than a series of 'ball one side of obstacles, star the other' levels, CPD could have reached greatness.
And it still might. It comes with a level editor, which lets you create levels in a manner in keeping with the rest of the game. You draw them using the crayons, with a collection of tools letting you pin permanent objects in place, add in rope and rockets (which are fired by dropping objects on them, and used for a few puzzles in the main game), and use the more advanced tricks like applying force to objects in your level. You can jump in and out of it as a playable level for tweaking, and then a simple in-game option lets you name it, describe it, and upload it to the game's site.
These appear in the "Playground" section, which at the time of writing only shows the most recent uploads (hopefully by the time the game is out on 7th January this will be archiving levels correctly). Then they can be downloaded as a PNG and played through the level editor. It would be much nicer if downloaded levels could be grouped together and played without having to go through the editor, so we hope to see that in a future update, but in the meantime there's an endless amount of challenges to approach once the main game is over, and hopefully as time goes on the best and most difficult will also be bundled.
That's just potential, but Crayon Physics Deluxe is still well worth the USD 20 for the adorable fun it offers right now. Having your drawings come to life is just wonderful, and when you choose to do something inventive and imaginative, you'll have a fantastic time. If only the level design forced this kind of innovation on the player, it would have been even better.
The “magic” feeling of all this, which John referred to when talking about the game last year, is still in evidence and can be quite profound. Seeing your squiggly line do something in the world, especially when attached to some other moving, working system, is just a wonderful, unnatural thing. This spontaneous creation of something from nothing makes it feel like great things must be possible within the game, and they often are - especially when Purho’s puzzle design hits its best moments. A few of the levels are truly ingenious. I suspect, however, that it will be the level editor that really shows us what the game is capable of. As with some many of these things, it will be the users, rather than the creator, who really figure out what the tools can really do.
Indeed, this fantasy toolkit of possibility is the kind of thing that videogames do best: expanding our expectations of what should be possible, and doing zany, arty things with technology that would make your grandmother do that wide-mouthed expression which accompanies profound “Disbelief At The World Today”. Particularly if you draw large penises that then interact with little toy cars and rockets. Because you can do that. And you will do that.
Hudson have also made an iPhone port of the game. More on that here.
LewieP on
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I can't believe this is out already.
To be fair, unless it has changed since I last played it, it uses similar tech, but the gameplay isn't really similar.
A PC, a mouse, twenty bucks, and patience til tomorrow.
So is he planning on putting it up on Steam too?
PSN: SAW776
The Incredible Machine series (TIM) took up a lot of my time as a young lad, and Armadillo Run had its way with me for quite a while. I enjoyed the tech demo of Crayon Physics and am looking forward to the real thing.
I want a Wii version.
Steam, PSN, XBL, Xfire and everything else JamesDM
Initial impressions shortly.
Only if GeekDad on Wired counts,
http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2009/01/review-crayon-p.html
Steam, PSN, XBL, Xfire and everything else JamesDM
I'll have to give this a look.
It looks great in screenshots, and the videos are very pretty too, but being in control of it is incredible.
It seems to be really forgiving. Like, if you screw up completely, just press space, and it resets the level entirely, and since non of the levels (so far) are particularly long, you never loose much progress.
I've loved _Ghosts Lullaby since I heard it, but it really fits the game well. I kind of wish there was more music. 3 Tracks is not a lot, but at least all 3 are excellent for the game.
The physics engine occasion has times when it doesn't quite know what to do, like when you draw inside an object, but it handles things pretty damn well for the most part.
A lot of the levels have millage for showing off, like elegant solutions that are not immediately obvious.
It's mostly good so far.
I guess I'll wait for more reviews. It'll give them time to hopefully address some pretty significant problems I keep reading about (memory mostly).
...Anyone remember Fez? Did it come out? It's about a dude with a (duh) fez, and it kinda borrows that Super Paper Mario dynamic of rotating the world on a 2d plane?
Facebook: MeekinOnMovies
Twitter: Twitter.com/MeekinOnMovies
My 10 commandments of game reviewing
7 Great Games Playing Watch_Dogs will remind you of/url]
Far Cry 4: 10 Essential Features it Must Have
10 Videogames Ruined By The Hype
They've not shown much, but in an interview with the dev I saw a while back, I remember him seeming very much like he had his head screwed on properly, I'm sure we'll hear more details in coming months. This is where updates will be made.
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You could totally burn it onto a disc, and draw your own boxart with crayons.
I like the way you think.
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Lewie, you seem to have some kind of connection to the creator, you should see if he could make either a standard dvd jacket or jewelcase slip and a cd label to throw into the distibution or toss up for download on the site. This is something I have been toying with and it seems to get good feedback.
Steam, PSN, XBL, Xfire and everything else JamesDM
In fact, if anyone were to have any questions they might want put to him, it might be a good idea to post them here before thursday...
yay physics games.
Bridge Builder was my first real love when it came to physics tech games. I remember huddled at my computer with my roommate taking turns while our girlfriends talked at the table behind us for hours... Man, I miss the days when I loved games enough to piss off my lady.
Steam, PSN, XBL, Xfire and everything else JamesDM
He should check out Steamworks.
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It is stumping my brain.
Satans..... hints.....
I could see it.
You could have the level be on both screen and still be able to draw on both. All you need is to bind a rotate function to a button, say R and L. If you press them, your entire level rotates 180, so you need to hold your DS upside down and the bottom (touch screen) becomes the top screen. Alternate between upside down and normal hold to draw on both the bottom and upper part of the level.
Satans..... hints.....
That too. But I still like my idea, and I'm convinced someone could develop a game where this mechanic's actually used in a cool way. It's surprising nobody did it yet. That'd be truly unique.
Also, I imagine a block building game could be cool for that mechanic, like you push the L trigger, the screen rotates, and gravity does its part.
Facebook: MeekinOnMovies
Twitter: Twitter.com/MeekinOnMovies
My 10 commandments of game reviewing
7 Great Games Playing Watch_Dogs will remind you of/url]
Far Cry 4: 10 Essential Features it Must Have
10 Videogames Ruined By The Hype
Yeah this guy should hold out on releasing the game until Nintendo agrees to give him a dev kit, if they decline him he should make some crazy blog about it and live stream himself making the game while shirtless in his office. He should name the game after himself too.
What, you mean his name isn't Robert Crayonphysics?