After finishing the puzzle game World of Goo, I decided to play another one. This time, the game was Crayon Physics Deluxe. It is a pretty creative game, both in concept and play style. The premise is simple—you need to maneuver balls to reach stars on the screen. In order to do so, you can draw boxes, wheels, ropes, or almost any type of shape you can imagine. From there, gravity and physics take over to influence a ball's movement. There are numerous islands, each containing multiple puzzles to solve. As expected the early puzzles are quite basic and easy to solve. By the end, however, the puzzles get fairly tricky. Even when you devise a workable solution, it can be finicky to get the drawing just right for success.

Eventually, I completed islands one through seven. I must admit that many of my later solutions were a bit lame, involving more brute force than finesse. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough stars to enter the final island. A minimum of 120 stars was required, which meant I would have needed to provide multiple solutions for quite a few puzzles. At this point, I don't feel the urge to go back and replay earlier levels so I will move on to another game. Crayon Physics Deluxe gets a thumbs up from me. However, it never quite grabbed my interest as well as World of Goo did.

My latest stretch of computer gaming has been playing World of Goo, a physics based puzzle game. It was a very well done game with a distinct visual style. You strive to complete most levels by directing blobs of goo to an exit pipe. In essence, it is a building game in which you construct towers, bridges, and other structures. The challenge is to exploit the limited resources at your disposal. Counting the epilogue, there were five chapters of multiple levels to complete. I found the length and difficulty to be just about right. The only level that caused me quite a bit of frustration was Observatory Observation Station, the game's penultimate level. After that, the finally level was a simple mop up with no real strategy required. Although there was a plot involving the World of Goo Corporation, it was quite forgettable and certainly took a backseat to the entertaining and rewarding gameplay.