This is a title that turns visual style into gameplay, which is a neat trick. To make this work, the developers of Max and the Magic Marker went about creating a world that appears as if it were drawn by a child. You can actually freeze the screen and see a raw version, depicted in all its Crayola glory, or view the more stylized version as you play through the game. The notion of how a child would animate his world and how that would flow into a videogame makes for some neat moments in Max and the Magic Marker, but it ultimately depends on some platforming tropes that hold it back. The characters are fun blobs and the pickups are just blobs, so the real items of interest tend to be the world around Max. As with any game that lets you create some part of the world around you, mostly referred to as "emergent gameplay," there is a lot you contribute to Max and the Magic Marker as you play the game. Your little budding Rembrandt needs to know that the drawings will be limited to simple lines, shapes, and outlines. This compares less favorably to games like Drawn to Life that let you create full-blown characters and in-game items. Our take on it is that Max and the Magic Marker isn't really a game about drawing, as much as a Platformer that includes a drawing mechanic.

There's some quality music playing behind the action, and some amusing sound effects, but nothing to knock your socks off. Given the rather limited palette of drawing tools, and the simplistic environments you'll explore, it would have been nice to hear music that created more interest. Rolling in more sound effects to accompany the drawing would also have improved things, or at least provided more incentive to create elaborate drawings. The tendency, after you get over the "ah-ha" moment of discovering how Max and the Magic Marker really works, is to start doing the minimum amount of drawing and exploring required, to just get through the levels and unlock the extra content. More attention to music - at least as much attention as was paid to the visuals - would have made for a better experience.

We mentioned this was a Platformer at heart, and we aren't kidding. The premise is original, but that's almost always the case. Love the idea of a kid venturing into his neighborhood on an adventure after finding that his "magic marker" is in fact magic, but can't stand the fact that all this potential largely goes to waste in a set of standard platforming levels. How Max navigates obstacles in Max and the Magic Marker can sometimes become really interesting, but there are limits to the game's technology that often make basic navigation feel like quite a workout. As Max explores, he gathers three types of orbs. The first type will fill his pen, which floats in the air as if you were using it to draw on the screen. The second type acts as a point system, and measures the "completeness" of each level. Finally, there are dark orbs that you collect as special challenges, often placed in hidden or hard-to-reach spots. Enemies are conquered by dropping drawn objects on them, or you can simply ignore them altogether. The long and short of Max and the Magic Marker is that it has a unique angle, but doesn't go nearly far enough to exploit the gameplay around the drawing mechanic.

The idea we've seen executed better in other "emergent gameplay" titles is that the game exists because of you. Without your creative actions, a game like Scribblenauts doesn't do anything - it exists because you call it into existence. Max and the Magic Marker has a much more utilitarian approach to emergent gameplay, setting out unreachable objects or goal-points that you must reach by drawing ladders and ramps. The number of times you'll draw a ladder, set of stairs, or ramp far outpaces the times you'll draw something really unique, or solve a puzzle by drawing. The monotone quality of your marker isn't the best tool for being creative, and Max is periodically hijacked by his made-up antagonist, who will steal all Max's ink. There are unlockable play areas that provide more free-form action, in opposition to the very regimented platforming style of the main game. We can see some limited replay value for gamers that enjoy the mechanics of Max and the Magic Marker, but nothing on par with games like Scribblenauts or Drawn to Life where you get to create and interact with an entire world of your creations.

Many of the challenges in the game are unnecessarily difficult. The process of drawing with the mouse is a bit awkward, when you have to make a line that goes beyond your mouse pad. A trackball would be nice for this, or better still, a drawing pad. There are also some strange physics at work in places during the game, so that you end up with unexpected actions. The killer object is a wooden raft that sits at the edge of any expanse of water you can't otherwise cross by drawing something. The method for launching the raft seems to be running back and forth on it, until it pops into the water. The weight and balance issues that crop up in sections like this can lead to a swift demise, but luckily there's a good auto-save system that prevents you from falling too far behind. Levels are designed well enough to encourage seasoned players or "replayers" to do more, in search of hard-to-grab items, without forcing novice or more casual players in over their heads. A few exceptions make for frustrating gameplay, but there are often easier ways to solve sections of the game. Lazy or casual players will find methods for drawing sloppy objects that are still passable for Max. The fact that you draw freehand during Max and the Magic Marker is a fun thing until you realize how imprecise you can be when drawing free hand. There's a do-over feature that lets you reclaim any drawing and start over, but there's no doubt that players will need a few times to master the larger, more involved drawings required to reach tall places or navigate larger obstacles.

A good practice for platforming on a PC or Mac is to offer navigation on both sides of the keyboard, adjusting for how people use their mouse or trackball. Max and the Magic Marker lets you control movement in this way, and the only other interaction you'll have with the keyboard is punching the spacebar to freeze the action. The interesting thing about pausing the game in this way is that you still retain control over the marker and can draw freely. The idea is that you can get around a time crunch, set up traps for enemies, and otherwise take your time drawing a masterpiece that will spring into action once you hit the spacebar again. We didn't find this feature terribly useful, but then we're used to doing more twitchy gaming. For players trying to get the hang of a puzzle without pressure, pausing and drawing is a neat idea. We've mentioned the limitations of using the mouse to draw, but the overall mechanics for drawing are sound. On a two-button mouse, the left button draws while the right button erases or sucks up ink. You don't need to worry too much about preserving ink, since your nemesis will end up sucking it out anyway at intervals.

Drawing on the screen sounds like a lot of fun, and we've played a few games where creativity-run-wild produced some great results. Max and the Magic Marker goes a long way toward spicing up its platforming action, but behind the drawing mechanic there's a pretty standard Platformer here. No great revelations are to be found in the jumping and climbing, unless you find drawing a ramp between platforms especially shocking. We definitely were hooked in for a few levels, but wanted more exotic puzzles and challenges that really took advantage of the ability to draw and interact with those drawings. The team behind Max and the Magic Marker should be commended for doing a mashup of emergent gameplay and platforming, but the game felt more like a demo than a finished product. We'd love to see a version that does more interesting things like the section that forces you to traverse a dark rainy path without getting wet. We loved these moments, but found Max and the Magic Marker to be pretty ordinary in many other dimensions.