Magic crayon Physics - now in online flash form

April 6, 2008 7:41 PM

Online Crayon Physics Flash version of stuff from here and here. No download needed (vs. prior posts) and totally addicting.
posted by filmgeek (36 comments total)

Fun. And cool music.
posted by PhatLobley at 7:54 PM on April 6, 2008

Ugh! The "feature" which completes a polygon (for example a rectangle) is too aggressive. This makes meaningful play very difficult, because I keep winding up with trapezoids.
posted by SteelyDuran at 8:03 PM on April 6, 2008

This is so blazingly, absurdly great!
posted by SteelyDuran at 8:18 PM on April 6, 2008

I've been waiting for it to come out in flash, thanks!

For us homebrew-running-capable DS owners there's also Pocket Physics. Still in beta and a little buggy though.
posted by griphus at 8:22 PM on April 6, 2008

iPhone. Want Now.
posted by sourwookie at 8:26 PM on April 6, 2008

This is very cool. It seems like the perfect DS game, too; I'll have to find out about getting that homebrew thing going at some point.
posted by danb at 8:27 PM on April 6, 2008

Addicted already.
posted by iconomy at 8:30 PM on April 6, 2008

damn you, filmgeek. i just spent nearly 2 hours "playing" with this. only i felt that i'd only spent about, oh, say 20 minutes or so.

[me, tomorrow morning] sorry, kids! i don't have all your work graded today. you can blame filmgeek.

i'll also have you know that when i placed the periods in this comment, i half expected the last word to "bounce" a bit, and i was looking for a way to insert a triangle to keep the sentence from rolling backwards. rassum frassum crayon physics.
posted by CitizenD at 8:45 PM on April 6, 2008

that's freaking awesome. Thanks!
posted by jacalata at 8:59 PM on April 6, 2008

I'm glad that this is out in flash, because its a great idea and a great game, and I know this guy is going to be very successful.

However, I can't play it because it makes me feel utterly stupid. It took me about a hundred tries to get Level 4 (because I'm a stupid moron girl who doesn't understand science or gravity apparently) and now I don't want to play anymore, because failing those 100 times has left me feeling so .... stupid.

They needed some easier ones to start. At least for me.
posted by anastasiav at 10:12 PM on April 6, 2008

Awesome, awesome game.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 10:16 PM on April 6, 2008

Gracious. This is a hard little game.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:33 PM on April 6, 2008

i imagine this will be keeping me occupied for the better part f tomorrow at work.

Thanks..
posted by mrzarquon at 10:39 PM on April 6, 2008

one of my biggest realizations was that you're allowed to put pins and hinges on the red object itself.
posted by alex3005 at 11:31 PM on April 6, 2008

Unbelievably fun. I was startled the first time the red circle was replaced with a square. "Magic Crayon Physics, you magnificent bastard!"
posted by PM at 1:02 AM on April 7, 2008

yeah, that red square one was amazing. I actually built, using many many stapled together shapes, a claw to grab the square and rotate it up to the flag before I realized that you could actually staple a shape TO THE SQUARE.

and the claw worked, too!
posted by shmegegge at 11:00 AM on April 7, 2008

but I'll be damned if I know how to get past level 13.
posted by shmegegge at 11:01 AM on April 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

I feel the same way about 13... Doesn't seem to be space to counter weight up the hill, or space to hit the ball up the hill in one shot, and I can't hit it far enough to build a second bat either.
posted by garlic at 12:05 PM on April 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'm pushing a pushrod-and-stays strategy on 13 and am only halfway up, friction is causing diminishing returns.
posted by felix at 1:02 PM on April 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

finished! woo hoo!
posted by garlic at 1:04 PM on April 7, 2008

garlic, how'd you get past 13?
posted by shmegegge at 1:05 PM on April 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

One of the things I figured out is that ALL connected pieces can swing through each other. also, connectors (and not their objects) can be erased.
posted by garlic at 1:08 PM on April 7, 2008

shme, I'll memail you a laborious but eventually successful method for 13.
posted by felix at 1:10 PM on April 7, 2008

I was able to do 13 by building a bunch of two wheel linkages (look like the flintstones car from the side) including one with the red ball on the front. Then I wedged them up the incline and kept making more. It took a long time.
posted by mbd1mbd1 at 1:12 PM on April 7, 2008

Note: Magic Pen isn't associated with the Kloonigames original that it borrowed so liberally from. He lists Petri Purho in the credits section, at least.
posted by waxpancake at 1:15 PM on April 7, 2008

damn you, I was all full of good vibes thinking this was a flash game from the same dude.
posted by shmegegge at 1:36 PM on April 7, 2008

13 turned out to be the hardest level; it should've been last. Apart from that, what an amazing experience.
posted by felix at 2:04 PM on April 7, 2008

Finally finished with 440 shapes total (I figured out how to do 13 with only 12 shapes). I don't know how the lowest score on the scoreboard (27) is even possible though.
posted by mbd1mbd1 at 3:03 PM on April 7, 2008

I can't get past 8.
posted by seanyboy at 3:23 PM on April 7, 2008

I started with 300 or so shapes, and went back to see if I could come up with more elegant solutions. I trimmed my shape count down to 73.

/geek
//ex mechanical engineer

Spoiler:
--You can overlap shapes if you use a hinge. If you delete the hinge afterwards, the shapes will un-overlap and nudge everything out of the way. You can make giant shapes to purposefully nudge the red ball/square forward. Triangles are very good at pushing things forward with the wedge-like physics.

--I often attach the ball to a trebuchet and delete the beam at its apex to fling the ball across the map. For even more efficiency, you can make a trapezoid trebuchet where it's shape acts as its counterweight.

You can beat level 1 to 5 with just 1 shape by putting a hinge on the ball, and drawing an oddly-shaped triangle with one vertex at the hinge. As the triangle falls into the hole, it puts a moment arm on the ball. You then delete the triangle right at the apex of the arc to fling the ball at the flag.

I had a lot of trouble with level 10/26, I found that making long bars w/ hinges over the map could get the ball over.

Level 13 was also a lot of trouble. I was able to trim it down to 4 shapes, by overlapping giant triangles and unhinging them. I got it down to 4 giant triangles.

Level 21 - another difficult one. Found a solution in 6 shapes. I pinned a big weight to the red square (deleting it as it drops) to fling the square towards the bamboo canopy. Then I used the unhinged giant triangle method to nudge the square to the flag.
posted by alex3005 at 5:14 PM on April 7, 2008

Wow. When I beat level 10 by building a chain, I felt awesome. A really nerdy kind of awesome.
posted by COBRA! at 6:28 PM on April 7, 2008

still doesn't hold a candle to Armadillo Run. mind you this is free, but Armadillo is so worth the $20.
posted by spish at 7:26 PM on April 7, 2008

253 Shapes my first run through. I could probably have gotten that down under 200 just by being more careful, but 25? No way.

Seconding Armadillo Run as being awesome.
posted by JohnYaYa at 8:37 PM on April 7, 2008

This game has ruined all possibility of my wife getting her PHD.
posted by Sam.Burdick at 8:22 PM on April 8, 2008

This is one of the best flash games I have ever played, and I hope that your wife's PHD wasn't in something important: like cancer research; but I do understand the interruption this game can cause.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 2:53 AM on April 10, 2008

How many levels are there? This game is taking over my life.
posted by iconomy at 2:47 PM on April 10, 2008