Magic Pen - a flash game review

Starts easy enough..

Magic Pen, what is it? Well, it’s a little hard to describe without playing it first, but here goes…

We’ve all heard of these physics games which are quite popular especially on the indie and casual games circuit, except this one has a neat little twist. The object of the game is to solve the puzzle, and what is the puzzle you might ask? To solve each level you simply have to get the red ball into the flag area. So how do you do that then I hear you ask? Well this is where it gets interesting because in order to do that, you need to construct various shapes, ramps, levels and pulley systems in order to get the ball moving! You draw out all these shapes with the ‘Magic Pen’ of the title, and it couldn’t be easier. Want a circle? Draw one and there it is…  A square? Four lines, done..  Triangle? Go ahead!

That’s the easy part done, the harder (and fun!) part is how you get these shapes to interact with each other!

The first few levels are quite easy and this serves well to familiarise yourself with some of the basics of the game. Build a couple of ramps here and there, a nicely placed rock with a make-shift pulley system and then draw a big rock in mid air which will then drop nicely onto the pulley and thus catapult the ball into the finish area (or no-where land if you’ve over done it just slightly!).

As the levels progress it gets slightly harder and you have to start thinking up ingenious ways of attaching shapes together with pins or hinges and you can end up with some very precarious looking constructions…  one false move and everything comes crashing down!

The difficulty level is set fairly well so it manages to keep your interest without getting too hard or frustrating (and this it will do!)

It’s definitely one of those games that gets you thinking as well as being fun. And once you get to those hard levels, the re-play factor is there as you just want to keep trying to solve the level!

It also a good example of what can be done in Flash too as it is obviously dealing with some quite complex physics maths and rendering in there.

Try the game out for yourself here: http://www.bubblebox.com/play/puzzle/975.htm
Or watch a video clip:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g7rbZ4OMU8