Magic Pen

I discovered this highly-addictive game after Sean heard about it on a forum, and then continued laughing and cursing at it for over an hour. I knew I had to give it a try.

The object of Magic Pen is simple: get the ball to roll onto the flag. By any means necessary. You have a magic crayon to draw shapes that you can drop, connect together, and build objects out of, all based on physics.

One of the hardest elements to this game was drawing the shapes the way I wanted them, since the program "smooths" out the lines for you once you finish drawing. I don't recommend playing this on a laptop touch-pad!

The best part of the game was that the shapes and contraptions really did follow the laws of physics! As far as crayon-drawn created-out-of-thin-air shapes and contraptions can, of course. It was even fun to see my lovely machines fall off a cliff because I weighted a swinging arm too much in one direction.


It was also fun to see how Sean and I both solved the levels differently. There's more than one solution to almost every level, and you can get really creative with your solutions. Sometimes putting our heads together was the only way to figure it out!

Alejandro Guillen, who created Magic Pen, also wrote another game called Spin the Black Circle (extra points for the Pearl Jam reference) which is supposed to be just as addictive. I haven't played it myself, but watching Sean puzzle out the levels proved that it could be a similar time-suck for me, if I let it.

http://www.bubblebox.com/play/puzzle/975.htm
http://www.mostfungames.com/spin-the-black-circle.htm