
And having to touch buttons while using the stylus is always a challenging maneuver in any DS game. There's a bizarre lag between moving the stylus and seeing the line appear. And while the stylus-on-touchscreen method sounds like it should be the best possible control scheme for a game about drawing with a magic marker, it doesn't work all that great. For one thing, the graphics simply aren't as good.

But the DS version doesn't hold up quite as well in comparison to previous versions of the game. Max and the Magic Marker is still a creative and clever physics game that gives players a lot to think about as they traverse its puzzling 2D levels.


This family-friendly game is very cute, but it's inventive enough to keep you interested. Hitting Space pauses 'time', allowing you to draw more specialized shapes to help Max. The Magic Marker is controlled with the mouse, while Max requires the keyboard. Max runs and jumps like a thousand platform characters before him, but if you collect orange ink items, you can draw on the screen with a pen, creating new platforms, shelter, rafts and even weapons to help Max in his quest. The game is all about Max trying to stop the monster. You control Max, owner of a magic marker, who draws a monster which then comes to life. Max and the Magic Marker is a mixture of traditional 2D platformer, and physics-based puzzles similar to Crayon Physics.
