Crayon Physics Deluxe - An ingenious video game that looks like it was designed by a third-grader

If you like Line Rider (or Line Runner), you'll love Crayon Physics.
--pws

excerpts from http://www.slate.com/id/2186848/

Most of the chatter was about a game called Crayon Physics Deluxe, which didn't get a glitzy demo on a huge video screen in front of an audience of thousands. Why all the love for a game that looks a bit like something your third-grader might ask you to stick up on the fridge? Watch the embedded video below, and you'll understand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsTqspnvAaI

Pretty awesome, huh?

Crayon Physics Deluxe lets you draw objects on the screen by clicking and dragging your mouse, or by drawing with the stylus of a tablet PC, as in this video. The objects you scrawl become part of the game world. The goal is to create objects that propel a crudely drawn ball toward a crudely drawn star. There is no single correct way to scoot that ball around; the fun is in exploring the options. Within seconds of hitting start, you're furiously scribbling blocks and ramps and wedges and seesaws, whatever it takes to reach the goal. Some players may get sidetracked creating hilariously inefficient Rube Goldberg devices. Others will forget the objectives altogether and just draw. (If you want to try it yourself, you can download a simpler demo version of the game here.)

Crayon Physics Deluxe was made by Petri Purho, a 24-year-old student at Helsinki Polytechnic. He makes games at the rate of about one a month and offers them as free, PC-only downloads on his personal site. Purho says his hobby was inspired by the Experimental Gameplay Project, the equivalent of Dogme 95 for indie game makers. The tenets of EGP are:

• Each game must be made in less than seven days.
• Each game must be made by exactly one person.
• Each game must be based around a common theme, i.e., "gravity," "vegetation," "swarms," etc.

But many of his experiments are wickedly funny and original. There are many games based on the exploits of Indiana Jones, but Purho's version is the only one that tells the story from the boulder's point of view, letting players control the rampaging sphere and smoosh wave after wave of attacking archeologists. Another game, Grammar Nazi, is a literate twist on shooters like Space Invaders. Players fire upward at swarms of enemies, but the ammo in Purho's version is the letters you type on the keyboard, and the longer the words you spell, the more damage they do. (Tapping out indie has some impact. Autodidact causes a massive explosion.) Purho made it in a single day.

Take Audiosurf, made by another game-a-week geek, Dylan Fitterer (with help from his wife, Elizabeth). The game is based on a simple, ingenious concept: transform your favorite music into a game. Audiosurf takes any music file from your computer and turns it into a level. While listening to the track, you steer a little rocket car back and forth to collect the beats as they whiz past and avoid others. It's the perfect way to kill five minutes, and it's currently one of the best-selling titles on the Steam downloadable-games service.