Think back to your childhood. Try to remember the things that brought you joy; I’ll bet they were simple pleasures, like getting an extra scoop of ice cream or being pushed higher than ever before on a playground swing. Now think of the stories that you read (or that your parents read to you), or the toys that you played with. Were they as simple to you as lines on a page, or action figures in your hands?
I doubt it. As children, humans have highly active imaginations; we’re capable of crafting entire worlds in our minds to envelop us — worlds with characters, things, and creatures that all have their own stories. Kids don’t need much to escape into a fantasy. Consider Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s tale, Where the Wild Things Are: the book consists only of ten sentences, yet its tale proved enthralling and fanciful enough to inspire a full-length feature film.
That the hero of Sendak’s story and the star of Max & the Magic Marker share the same name is likely a coincidence. But the two works have another thing in common: they both focus on a child’s imagination, and the magical and dangerous things that can happen when it runs free.
[Editor’s note: All screenshots in this preview are from the PC version of the game.]
Max & the Magic Marker (PC, Mac, WiiWare)
Developer: Press Play
Publisher: Press Play
Released: January 22, 2010 (WiiWare / EU) / February 8, 2010 (PC, Mac)
To be released: March 8, 2010 (WiiWare / NA)
I saw Max & the Magic Marker in New York City last week. During the demo, Ole Teglbjærg, director and co-founder of Danish indie studio Press Play, explained to me that “the game is all about creativity.” He wasn’t talking only about the creativity of Max, the game’s lead character; MATMM also requires ingenuity from the player. Max & the Magic Marker is a physics-based 2D puzzle platformer whose primary mode of interaction is a drawing mechanic borrowed from Petri Purho’s Crayon Physics Deluxe. Another inspiration, said CEO & co-founder Rune Dittmer, was LittleBigPlanet, which exuded a “platforming is fun” ethos from its inception. “We wanted to bring [its] playfulness into [MATMM],” Rune told me.
The concept for MATMM sprang from Ole’s interactions with his nephew, who was six years old when development began on the game in January 2008. The boy had done some drawings of robots, and to Ole, they looked “really cool,” but ultimately, they were “a child’s doodles.” However, as far as Ole’s nephew was concerned, the drawings contained a “totally living world,” and Ole discovered this when he talked with his nephew about them. As Ole explained, Press Play sought to capture the idea that when an adult looks at a child’s artwork, he sees a simple drawing, but in a child’s imagination, “everything comes to life.”
One day, Max receives an orange marker in the mail. Unbeknownst to him, it is a magic marker; anything drawn with it becomes real. The first thing Max sketches is a monster, Mustacho, who invades Max’s art, running amok and making mischief. So Max jumps in after the creature, intent on capturing it. Just as children picture themselves with strength and courage they may not have in real life, Max is a tough little kid in the game world. “We wanted to make a character that would reflect how we like to think we were ourselves when we were ten years old,” explained Ole. Max doesn’t have any super powers, but like Uncharted’s Nathan Drake, he’s blessed with fingers of steel, able to latch onto a platform or ledge and climb up. He won’t sustain damage if he falls from a height; “he [only] dies if he touches dangerous things,” said Ole — things like enemies, lasers, and water.
The game takes place inside Max’s imagination. All of Max’s colorful drawings are transformed into worlds for him to traverse with the aid of his magic marker. You can use the marker to draw objects in real time, but you can also draw while the game is paused. The paused version of the game is meant to represent Max when he momentarily steps out of his imagination back into real life: the “alive” game world reverts to a static child’s doodle, Max taking the form of a stick figure. It’s an effect that’s purposely jarring. The pause screen also reduces frustration — draw a platform below Max if you’re about to fall into water — and becomes a strategic gameplay element in its own right: you can build a tower one jump at a time, sketching each subsequent level while Max is airborne.
Ole told me to think of the orange ink as hardening into lead. So the more ink you use for a particular drawing, the heavier it will be. This figures into the game’s physics system. For example, you can construct a rudimentary seesaw and put Max on one end of it; the bigger the orange ball you drop on the raised end, the higher Max will soar. The marker drawings are invulnerable to environmental hazards save for lasers, fire, and green acid, so you can use the ink as a shield. Don’t worry about trapping yourself: you can erase a drawing at any time.
Max & the Magic Marker contains three worlds of increasing difficulty; each has five levels. The first world, “Sweet Home,” is bright and green, evoking the Green Hill Zone that opened Sonic the Hedgehog, though it’s more suburban than tropical. “Shiver Me Timbers” is a pirate-themed land, and the final stage is yet another bastion of childhood fascination, “Robot Factory.” You collect balls of ink as you go — there are enough so that you almost never have to worry about running out — but at every checkpoint, Mustacho drains your marker with a vacuum.
The game offers two other types of collectible items. Light bulbs function as a score of sorts and can unlock certain things. Rarer are black orbs, which are hidden in out-of-the-way places like extra rings in Sonic games. You’ll encounter signs that hint at an orb’s location, and that encourages you to explore the environment. In some cases, exploration will even reward you with shortcuts.
I watched Ole complete an early level by repeatedly utilizing seesaws and towers, which spurred me to ask if those tactics would get Max through the rest of the game. Ole responded by showing me a level from the Robot Factory that demanded creativity to activate switches as well as pixel-perfect platforming in the vein of a Mega Man game. The developers expect skilled gamers to be able to finish the game in three hours, but I assure you, its later levels offer quite a challenge.
Like games such as A Boy and His Blob, Max & the Magic Marker is instantly charming from a visual standpoint, but it has the puzzle gameplay to back up its looks. I’m someone who has always strived to keep the “kid” inside him alive, which is why the game quickly drew me in. I imagine it will enchant plenty of other American Wii owners when it launches on WiiWare on Monday, March 8th, for 1000 Wii Points. It is already available on PC and Mac for $20; you can find a playable demo on its Web site.
