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Monday, June 4, 2007

Kloonigames Strays Into Crayon Physics

x.jpg We've linked Petri Purho's 'made in a week' Kloonigames freeware titles before, most recently the politically-themed 'Daydreaming in the Oval Office', but his latest attempt is 'Crayon', a title in which "...you play with crayons and physics."

He explains of the downloadable title, simply enough: "The goal of the game is to move the red ball so that it collects the stars. You can cause the red ball to move by drawing physical objects... With left mouse button you can draw and with right you can remove objects."

The game appears to be a whole heap of fun, and has already received some notable praise in the comments from folks like EA's Rod Humble (creator of The Marriage, which Purho spoofed in The Divorce), and longtime experimental gameplay mainstay and horrifically smart guy Chris Hecker, who's currently working on Spore.

Actually, Hecker's comments are particularly notable for me because they're smart and analytical in a constructive way - something we try to get IGF judges to do (and sometimes succeed!): "I didn’t realize you could draw a single line at first, and I think it was slightly incrementally more fun that way, trying to draw thin boxes with the mouse. It added a little bit of a really subtle dexterity action component to the puzzles on some of the levels, trying to hurry but still draw a thin box. Not too much to be frustrating, but enough that it’s interesting, and it makes long thin boxes more difficult to make, which is a kinda cool feedback loop since they’re “more powerful” in some sense."

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