I get the feeling that Hexcells is going to cast a long shadow over any puzzle game I play for a very long time. Crayon Physics sounds like a great idea for a game. Drawing pulleys, hoists, bridges and ramps in crayon to guide a ball past various obstacles is great fun, and mechanically the game is excellent. However, where Hexcells shines, this game stumbles: level design.
About half way through the game, there's a level that introduces you to the idea of dragging the ball over an obstacle by fixing a pulley to an elevated position, building a cage around the ball, and then hooking the cage up to a weight with a length of rope. The first time you make this work, you feel like a god of engineering. The problem is, I was then able to use this method to complete all but two of the levels in the second half of the game.
So, I had fun drawing nonsense machines while listening to some podcasts, but this never got beyond the point of being a pleasant distraction. Hexcells has ruined me.
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