“Pencil Heart” by Steppe Hare Studio (Dmitriy Mozokhin, Zarif Kurochkin & Rinat Kurochkin).
“[A] platformer, in which you play as a pencil who sacrifices himself to draw his way to love.”
First I have to say that implementing puzzle platformers with drawing mechanics is always a great idea. It makes fun to manipulate the environment with the help of some scribbles instead of playing around with fixed platforms. But what “Pencil Heart” makes special gameplay-wise is another mechanic: Thanks to the fact that the character actually is a pencil, this mechanic cannot be used in an unlimited way. The graphite of the animated writing tool works as a life bar, so when you use the mechanic too much, you cannot go on.
Another lovely gimmick is implementation of a rubber, so that you can erase your former made lines, and a sharpener. When you use the last one, the pencil gets so spiky that it can burst balloons, which have to be destroyed sometimes to open up new passages. All those little features make “Pencil Heart” a neat little jam game with fun ideas. [PLAY]
