Playing with crayons

by ERIK LEIJON

Sometimes a video game will emerge from obscurity with an idea so deliciously simple it’s a shock no one had conceptualized it earlier. In all facets, young 2009’s most buzzed about new game Crayon Physics Deluxe (PC/Kloonigames) encapsulates the easy-going, unregulated fun of drawing.

My dreams of becoming a cartoonist may have died years ago, but those moments outlining my favourite video game characters along the margins of my school copybooks remain as innocent as ever. Perhaps no one had thought of it earlier because everyone’s too old and jaded to remember how uncomplicated having fun used to be.

Crayon Physics Deluxe was originally created in 2007 by Finnish developer Petri Purho and immediately piqued the interest of his peers, but only now is the completed game finally available for sale from his official Web site. Each of the game’s 70-plus puzzles consists of one stationary screen, a red ball and a star. The goal is to direct the ball into the star by drawing pullies, blocks, ropes or whatever one can dream up in order to get around the crudely drawn fridge-door-worthy obstacles.

As if my inability to draw a straight line in the game wasn’t enough of a reminder of my ill-fated cartoonist aspirations, Crayon Physics is still a tough puzzle game at heart—rewarding players who find solutions with as few doodles as possible. In addition to the no-holds-barred solution mode that yields a star (used for accessing later levels), one more star is dished out in each stage for coming up with elegant, old school and awesome solutions.

As with the open-ended nature of committing crayon to paper, there are a multitude of ways to approach each puzzle. Drawing only one object to create the necessary chain reaction is called the elegant solution. Old school means not pushing the ball forward with the mouse or building some sort of massive contraption underneath the ball to guide it. The awesome solution provides the most fun, as the idea is to devise the most unnecessary convoluted resolution, utilizing the specific skills taught throughout the single-player mode.

Crayon Physics Deluxe looks as innocent as it sounds, right down to the crooked yellow-orange sun situated on the top right corner of most levels. Even the background looks like the crumpled side of a paper grocery bag, and everything created by the player and Purho are nothing more than squiggly lines and non-concentric circles. If Mario Paint ever crossed paths with LittleBigPlanet, it might bear some resemblance to CPD’s level editor.

It’s tough to make a genuinely fun level and the editor mode uses a strange pin system not used in the actual game, but the community has already embraced it with interesting puzzles. Accessing other users’ created levels can only be done through a Web browser as opposed to through the actual game. PC owners can check out the demo at crayonphysics.com. CPD is also available for iPhone.

Union man

The Last Remnant (X360/Square Enix) is a unique turn-based role-playing game from Square Enix, whiny teenage protagonist notwithstanding (a bad Square Enix habit). The new union system isn’t much different from your typical party-based RPG, except instead of controlling individual characters Last Remnant emphasizes small armies, called unions. Each union shares magic and health so they feel like a singular unit, but mixing and matching up characters for each union is yet another layer of menu-based strategy ideal for micromanaging. Unfortunately every massive brawl is marred by debilitating frame-rate issues and uninspired art direction. Square Enix fans will dig the battle system, but the overall package is disappointing