Crayon Physics Deluxe

Crayon Physics Deluxe is built on the simple pleasure of turning a doodle into a machine that actually solves the puzzle. By our assessment, it is a physics puzzle game for people who like drawing bridges, ramps, weights, and little contraptions and then watching gravity do the rest. Its real strength is the directness of the interaction: sketch a shape, see whether it behaves, adjust, try again. The downside is that a game this spare can feel brief and, at times, a bit dependent on the player coming up with the right idea. In practice it is calm, tactile, and oddly exact, with solutions that depend more on the logic of shapes than on flashy presentation. Compared with more scripted puzzle games, it gives you more freedom and less hand-holding, and that is the point.