Crayon Physics Deluxe

Crayon Physics Deluxe is a puzzle game from Petri Purho (working as Kloonigames) that won the Independent Games Festival's grand prize in 2008 and launched on January 5, 2009. Its core mechanic relies on two-dimensional physics—gravity, mass, kinetic energy, and momentum transfer—to solve levels.

Gameplay

Players cannot directly control the ball; instead, they draw objects like rigid surfaces, wheels, pivots, or ropes that interact with the ball by hitting, rolling, dragging, or launching it. Clicking the ball nudges it left or right, and some levels include rockets as tools. The game rewards creative solutions over brute force, ships with over seventy levels, and includes a level editor plus an online Playground for sharing custom content.

Crayon Physics Deluxe

The original prototype, simply called Crayon Physics, was Purho's tenth rapid-prototype project, built in five days using Creative Commons resources and released as freeware for Windows in June 2007. Fans reverse-engineered its level format before an official editor arrived on June 30. The Deluxe version, announced in October 2007, took a year and eight months to develop, adding an intuitive editor, more levels, and an engine that preserved drawings instead of turning them into rectangles. At the 2008 Game Developers Conference, Chris Baker of Slate Magazine noted that Deluxe generated more buzz than Gears of War 2.

Platforms

Published by Hudson Soft, the iOS version launched on January 1, 2009, followed by a PC release six days later. Versions for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Android arrived with the Humble Indie Bundle for Android 4 on November 8, 2012. Mac and Linux ports were announced on July 27, 2011.

An unofficial DS clone, Pocket Physics, offered only free play, and a Windows Mobile port was later pulled but remains available unofficially. The game is pre-loaded on some Android devices, such as the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1. According to Metacritic, the PC version received generally favorable reviews.