Review:
Max & the Magic Marker

Max & the Magic Marker is a casual game in which you take on the roll of Max, who as the title suggests, receives a magic marker in the mail. The great thing about it is that whatever he draws with this marker has the ability to gain life in his drawings. The downside though, is that Max drew a mischievous purple monster, and now that creation is running around Max’s drawings and wrecking havoc. It’s up to Max to traverse through fifteen levels, using the power of the magic marker, to help stop this purple monster from creating even more chaos.

This is the basic premise of Max & the Magic Marker, and while it is a simple concept, it is one that is executed with a fair amount of polish. Normally, a game like Max would not be something that I generally looked to play. Yet after spending just a few minutes in the gorgeously cute world that the developers have created, it’s fairly easy to want to keep playing. The graphics in the game are done extremely well, with bright vibrant colors throughout enticing you to move forward through the levels.

In order to get through the levels though, you’ll need to master Max’s gameplay of classic platforming, drawing and time manipulation. Early on the game plays like early Super Mario games, where the players are helping Max pick up light bulbs, ink for the magic marker, and jumping over pits of water. The game starts to pick up in difficulty when it adds elements in which you have to draw your way out of. They start off simple enough, where there is a very large chasm you need to get across, so you draw a straight line from one end to the other to create a bridge. Other sections have you building stairs, or dropping weights on seesaws so that Max can get to higher elevations. As you move up in the levels though there will be times where you need to give Max boxes to ride across conveyer lines, or pulley systems to get him to swing to certain areas.