Imitation? Flattery? Who cares, it’s fun!

This is Magic Pen. Not to be confused with that early morning Bill Cosby kid’s show with the magic writing implements, and not to be confused with a certain other physics based game (that one had crayons, not pens, it’s way different!). No, this is TOTALLY UNIQUE Magic Pen. Yeah right, so maybe it is a ripoff of Crayon Physics. All the same, it’s a lot of fun to play, and it’s totally free.

Like Crayon Physics, the goal is to get a ball (or in some levels, a square) to touch all of the flags on the screen. You accomplish this by drawing objects – circles, polygons, irregular shapes – and then let gravity act on your creations as though they were real. Magic Pen rips off the upcoming release of Crayon Physics by adding in the ability to draw pins and hinges. Pins allow you to link two shapes together. Hinges allow your shapes to rotate. By creatively linking and hinging your objects together, you can create unique ways to move or trap the ball. Creating mini-catapults is particularly satisfying once you figure out how to do it.

It’s a fun game, despite being a total ripoff. There’s no option to disable the music, and the game doesn’t default to the high-quality setting (press B to toggle that on). Some of the levels are needlessly difficult (the levels where there’s a square instead of a ball are the bane of my existence!), and sometimes the shapes you draw don’t come out quite like you meant. These flaws aren’t show-stopping, though. It’s a fun way to waste some time, and there are a lot of levels in it. Even though they’re fairly simple, these kinds of games make me really excited for LittleBigPlanet. Hurry up and get that game released, Sony!