Guinness Based Physics

A long time ago in a high school far far away... I studied applied maths. Like any other job teachers need some on the job training and we ended up with a student teacher. I don't think we were particularly nice to the poor bloke (I can't imagine anything worse than a room full of obnoxious 16/17 year olds). One of his lessons, however, forever changed the way we treated him -- he had somehow managed to make a maths lesson fun.

He was attempting to teach us the maths behind the centre of gravity in different objects. Rather than some random shape though he decided that the most relevant thing to us would be working out how steep a slope you could stand a pint glass on without losing any beer! Of course given a blackboard and white chalk it has stuck in my head as the Guinness based physics lesson. I don't usually reminisce about high school (not the most enjoyable period of my life) but something I saw the other day brought that maths lesson flooding back.

I read a review for a new independently developed computer game called Crayon Physics Deluxe. The game is described by it's developer as a 2D physics puzzle / sandbox game, in which you get to experience what it would be like if your drawings would be magically transformed into real physical objects. Solve puzzles with your artistic vision and creative use of physics. Drawn objects move and fall as they would in real life. No more maths to work out if that pint glass will topple over!

I downloaded and played all the way through the demo and thought it was so good I was quite happy to spend the $19.95 for the full version, especially as buying the game directly supports the single developer rather than going straight to the purse of some large games company.

My Rating: I think the idea behind the game is brilliant and it was well executed to produce a thoroughly enjoyable game.