Game Name: Max And The Magic Marker Developers: Press Play/The Games Company Price: £12.95 Release Date: Out Now!
Review by Andy Yates
Have you ever dreamed of a game that's a cross between a Super Mario title and Crayon Physics! Well you need dream no longer as that strange combination has finally arrived in the shape of Max And The Magic Marker!
You play Max, a young lad who is a budding artist. He receives, via mail delivery a mystery magic marker pen! You then play within the land of your imagination (nobody really gets hurt then) and attempt to stop an evil purple monster thing that he draws first. In essence it's a platform game, you can jump from surface to surface and even grab onto the edge of platforms to pull yourself up. As you run through the world you can pick up bright orange balls which fill up your marker pen. The marker pen is always onscreen and is controlled by the mouse and when you have ink in the pen you can draw objects to help you in your quest.
Like any well designed game using the marker pen to create objects is easy to pick up and a little trickier to master. In some ways I felt that there was far more thought put into the mass of items that you create than other similar games. This was good because it game some weight to the physics. I was also quite proud later on when I realised that because the shapes you draw are completely rigid, drawing a Z shape to stand on worked just as well as a box but used less ink!
Another neat touch with the drawing of objects was that you can pause the game at any point with the space bar. This means that you can take your time drawing objects while you are jumping through the air or falling to your doom! What's really special about this though is it's described as stopping your imagination, and it's represented by each in-game object being drawn as if by a 10 year old (or as well as I can draw!)
Talking of the art Max and the Magic Marker really is great to look at, everything is cartoony but it's some of the neatest cartoony art I've seen in a game for some time. There has obviously been lots of time spent on getting Max right as it's great to see how he walks, jumps and also watches around the screen wherever you move the marker pen.
The music is nice but there are only a handful of tunes. Again "Press Play" have been clever and the music changes slightly as your progress through a level. What's especially wonderful however is the transition of the music when you leave the imagination (eg. pausing.) It turns into a tinny, radio like version of itself that sounds like it's being played on a gramophone! Another great little touch is that when you fall from a great height the music dims down and a whistling sound is played before the music returns. The only disapointing aspect for me about the music was the final zone themes which felt too gentle and rambling where I wanted something more electric and mechanical to suit the theme of the levels.
