By Don Smith
You should totally check out the Flash game Magic Pen. It’s a fun and simple game that starts easy and quickly becomes more challenging. The basic game play involves a ball and one or more flags spread over a small “level” where your objective is to get the ball to the flag(s). I know, it sounds kinda dumb; keep reading. Your mouse cursor is represented by a crayon which you can use to draw in the game, and when you draw shapes they immediately become part of the level. Although the graphics have a whimsical child’s drawing look to them, the shapes all interact with each other using fairly convincing physics; draw a downward pointing triangle above the ground and watch it fall and then tip depending upon which side is heavier.
In the first level, you need only draw a ball above the “game ball” so it drops on it, knocking it to the right and hitting the flag. From there you start moving into new terrain where you need to create ramps, and figure out ways to generate enough force to move the ball along, up, and over obstacles, overcoming the force of gravity. As you draw, top heavy items topple over, balls roll down slopes, and assembled structures can crumble when hit by sudden forces.
In addition to drawing shapes to coerce the ball along, you also have the ability to create pins and hinges. Pins allow two objects to be inflexibly anchored to each other. Since the object drawing engine will “smooth” objects out a bit, and doesn’t allow for concave shapes, when you need a concave shape (a hook for example), you need to build it out of pinned together convex shapes. Hinges–which really ought to be called pivots–are pivot points. Put a pivot onto a block and draw another shape around it and it’ll rotate, per the effects of gravity, in a pendulous manner. Using pivots and the force of gravity you can create pseudo-golf clubs to knock the ball around the level.
While it takes a bit to get a feel for the real time drawing and interaction environment, Magic Pen is a really neat use of Flash, a well implemented physics engine, and a humorous and challenging game.
