One thing I loved about the game was the richness of the animation. The art style is based on children's' drawings, which the creators actually referred to when designing the backdrop and overall look of Max and the Magic Marker. The drawings are cutesy, even nostalgic at times, and the colors are lush. Surprisingly, the main villains of this game are quite unremarkable. They're just these short nuggety purple blobs that bounce around on the floor. It was almost as if the design team used all their creativity and had none left when it came to creating the direct antagonist of the game. Oh well.

There are some other technical oversights I wish were addressed. One thing I found extremely annoying was the narrow zoom of the camera, effectively reducing your line of vision so you can't tell what's ahead of you, what you need to do, and most importantly: what you need to draw. The game will just leave Max at the edge of a cliff or an edge of island and you have to purposely take a huge leap towards your death just to see what's beyond the screen.

I played on my 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro and found that switching between navigating Max with the keyboard and drawing with the mouse became tiring very quickly. Although I realize there's no real other way around it, it still bugged me, and I can see why this game excels better on a Wii system. Furthermore, despite the fact that there are plenty of diverse puzzles for Max to solve in order to get around physical barriers and such, I would say a bulk of the gameplay is spent drawing stairs, lots of them. One can only draw staircases a couple dozen times within the hour before going crazy.

Max and the Magic Marker doesn't have an earth-shattering game concept, but that's OK, because the game is so well executed. The colorful graphics, the puzzles, and the undeniable cuteness of it all made the game quite charming. Of course, the switching back and forth between the mouse and those staircases gets a bit repetitive and frustrating, but for a kid, I could see how their relentlessness would probably keep the ball rolling. The game retails for $20 with four hours of gameplay time, but it can go on for much longer, considering how smart you are at figuring out this stuff and the fact that there are a few hidden treasures to seek out (like the oh-so-elusive ball of black ink). Max and the Magic Marker is an enjoyable and clever platformer that will most likely keep kids engaged for hours--allowing them to color inside, outside and all around the lines.