Zen With A Pen

Zen with a Pen is quite a misleading name for a game that becomes very challenging, very fast. I'm not easily frustrated after years of playing Super Hexagon, Boson X and other fail-or-finish games; however, this little fun right here made for a very infuriating Sunday morning, which I find very enjoyable. The premise is easy to understand and execute: Guide a small ball through an increasingly difficult path of obstacles, with your mouse working as a fountain pen. Left click to apply ink, right click to remove it but be aware that the ink itself vanishes on its own. Physics are active and a constant stream of air pushes you forward, most of the time right into a spiky ending. I admit in all honesty that this is a pretty hard game, at least for me. I had to take a break in level 4 because I was stuck at the final checkpoint. In order to overcome a couple of corners, it was mandatory to apply the force of a certain power-up. Couple this with a slight degree of randomness, you'll always get when a ball hits a plane, and suddenly it feels like a game of chance rather than of skill. Speaking of power-ups: there are four of them, with varying effects. One makes the ball very small, the other gives a shield to survive one spiky hit and the one I was talking about before gave a huge boost but only on the first contact with any object. Difficulties range from Easy to Zen but don't get fooled: Zen is by far the hardest, without even having any checkpoints in between. Easy provides more ink and power-ups and yet I still struggled. [hr][/hr] If I had to suggest some minor improvements, especially for long-term replayability, two things come to my mind. Firstly, remove the need to finish a level to unlock the next. As of right now, every time I get back to Zen with a Pen, I either have the choice to replay a course in higher difficulty or that one level I'm currently stuck in. I rather enjoy playing level 5 until I hit a wall ─ or a spike, figuratively speaking ─ and move over to level 6 until I'm stuck again. Maybe unlock the next level after finishing 50% of the prior course, to give players something to look forward to, even if they fail. This might be personal preference though. Secondly, the music. I think many tracks are very well done and kind of remove some of the frustration that's building up. However, to restart from a checkpoint, you have two choices: Wait until the camera has settled in again, which, like everything in game can be sped up via holding the space bar, or press a rewind button in the top right corner. The latter is much quicker but causes the music to restart, which can be annoying after repeated attempts. It would be great to have the option to instantly restart without the music resetting. [hr][/hr] In summary, Zen with a Pen is great little time-killer that fits perfectly into a lunch-break, a morning routine or whenever you want something that's easy to pick up but hard to finish. It's not a big game, only offering 8 levels so far but I'm sure that it will take some time to finish these, even on lowest difficulties. If there was something I dislike it's the occasional randomness of the ball. This of course can't be avoided entirely but it's unnecessarily adding up on the already difficult game design. If you still can't decide, give the free demo a try! [code][i]If you like reviews about indie games, consider joining [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/indiestructible]INDIEstructible[/url] and follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41972991/]my curations[/url].