Crayon Physics Deluxe
(*sigh* And so goes another game in at least one of the Humble Indie Bundles.) At this point, it's getting pretty overwhelming. It's gotten to the point where I don't have time to play much more relevant games (LA Noire, Radiant Historia, something else) because I need to blast through Atom Zombie Slasher, man! But don't let this sense of defeat reflect negatively on this game. Instead, reflect on these words I'm about to write (that includes the many, many words to follow): Crayon Physics Deluxe is an awesome game. Sort of like Scribblenauts, only you can draw dicks.
Of course, there's more to this game than just drawing dicks. There's a story and stuff. That's certainly surprising. Turns out you're an apple travelling the world for very unclear reasons and by very unclear methods (but more on that in a bit), resulting in an unclear ending. That's it. Wait, that makes no sense. How can it have such an awesome atmosphere if there's no story to go alongside it? Everything's about this game is just so calm and relaxing and other words that mean calm and relaxing. Just look at a screenshot of this. Not a lot to it. Just something the designer's daughter probably drew and...no, that's about it, really. But still, that's enough to make you feel like you're in kindergarten, even if that's not enough for the developers. That probably explains why they added such calming music. Wanna guess why I didn't use it for this blog? Because my muscles would be far too relaxed to be able to type this blog. I'm not calling the music bad (it, like everything else, is pretty much Epic Yarn on some form of roids that make you more docile), but really good at its job. Oh, and add onto all that the brevity of each level (if you don't suck at the game, of course), and this game's a really good way to relieve some stress. Who needs to squeeze balls when you can slap balls together? (That was exactly as gay as I thought it would be.)
And now we come to the "physics"....sort of. Turns out that this is a physics based puzzle game in the vein of Scribblenauts. I know that that sentence is confusing to those who have actually played Scribblenauts, so allow me to explain: each level tasks you with collecting a star or two, and no, that's not the Scribblenauts part. The Scribblenauts comes in when you realize that you can draw ANYTHING YOU WANT TO SOLVE THESE PUZZLES. Want to tear a man apart with penises? Yes, that's something you can (and I have been known to) do. Want to fuck around with rocket physics? That's the best part of the game! (Unfortunately, I can't show that, because everybody on YouTube is apparently good at the game.) Want to fuck around with non-rocket physics? That's....not as good as rocket physics, but it can still be pretty awesome. Want some direction? Oddly enough, that's in here, too, because the game only has a few set objects: pin, rope, shape, other stuff, etc. Now that may sound incredibly limiting, but you can do a lot with this, something the game knows. It manages to get a lot out of launching your balls directly into stars, even if it only manages to fit that in about eight quick hours or so. So it's a pretty easy game, right?
Shut the fuck up with your incorrect wrongness, you false moron. This is actually a pretty difficult game, at least especially if you want it to end at some point. Turns out that some of the levels can be really unclear as to how to work the physics in your favor. For example: how do you get a star that's directly underneath you and a platform's in the way? What's that? Loop the ball around? That's a good way to see your ball plummet into the abyss. You have to figure out how to use all your tools to get those stars...on most levels. On some, it's entirely possible to cheese the physics engine into getting you a star. There are tons of levels where I got a star either by drawing lines underneath a ball until it got to the star, or by creating a tedious rope support system that essentially does the same thing. Granted, this would sometimes utterly break the game engine (it even tells you so), but that can be perfectly avoided if you erase redundant portions. Or if you try to get the elegant and old school solutions. Whichever works. Maybe I should explain that. Elegant means "use only one item"; old school means "don't touch the fucking ball". Taken together, they make the game stupidly difficult...and awesome. (I'd say something about awesome solutions, but there's nothing awesome about checking off a fucking box.)
Review Synopsis
- Imagine if Epic Kirby met Canvas Curse in a bar...
- ...and then Scribblenauts decided to take them back to his place...
- ...and one of them has an erection.
At first, this video doesn't seem terribly notable, so allow me to add some context. The original video was something that could feasibly be done by one or two people in their free time. It was a limited type of drug-fueled crazy. This, however, required far more people, coordination, money, and business backing (which leads me to believe that somebody thought they could make money off this)....and they made it like this. And I know that they censored the Fuji TV reference, meaning there were copyright issues, which means this probably aired on television. Let that rest in your mind for the rest of your day(s).
TRAUMA
(Oh, what the fuck?) This was supposed to be Halo Wars, damn it! I even had a cool Futurama joke for it and everything. Now I can't do any of that until next year. *sigh* Fine, let's get on with this. Oh, look at that: this is also a Humble Indie Bundle game. Should I go with "killing two birds with one stone" or "they'll let any game be humble in a bundle nowadays"? That last one seems pretty good. Now why am I giving off such a defeated atmosphere in regards to this game? Well, that's because TRAUMA is a brief game that uses its short amount of time to confuse the shit out of you before fading back into nonexistence.
Now unlike the last Humble Indie Bundle game I tackled one section ago, plot is everything to this game. Unfortunately, much like the previous Humble Indie Bundle game, there's no plot to be found in this game. Hell, I had to look up the game on the wiki to figure out what the shit was going on. Apparently, a university professor (the game never says what she's professor of, so I'm guessing it's Professorology) with a horrible fake British accent got in a car wreck, and she's kinda bummed about it. She goes to a psychologist to work things out, and that's when you discover that she's fucking crazy. That's where I lose track of things. For reasons that will become clear in the next paragraph, the story is very jumbled and messy and hard to make out. All the little tidbits simply explain her emotions at the time and her backstory and all this other stuff, but it never really adds up to any sort of forward story, at least not a recognizable one. It's just her using magic to do something crazy (because why not?), talking with her psychologist for a brief minute, and then ending the level. Repeat that a bit, throw in tons of symbolism that I imagine would have some meaning if the story made any sense, and you have the story of TRAUMA.
Wait, I forgot that TRAUMA isn't a series of video clips waiting to be edited into something coherent. It's a game, although not much of one. Perhaps I should explain what type of game. A Flash game, first of all, something I find humorous to no end. But after getting past the laughter, I discovered it was an adventure game. A really odd adventure game. There are four levels (it's much shorter than it sounds (I completed it in about a day)), and each one focuses on solving a single puzzle with crazy magic bullshit. Of course, to get this magic bullshit to work, you have to find a clue in a series of photos that make Memento look conservative. Of course, you don't need to find all the photos in the level to get this magic, and you probably don't want to, because navigating these levels is kinda weird. I honestly can't explain it in words (like Google Maps, but stupid?), so here's some video. And...that's really all there is to the game. Not much else, outside those backstory photos and tutorial photos (that begin to repeat themselves long after you're expected to know what the hell they do). So if that appeals to you, go see a psychologist and get that treated.
Review Synopsis
- Why use three bullets to describe this game when one video sums it up so succinctly?
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