Chalk

5 Chalky and Delicious
I’m always looking out for cunning new ways to use the mouse in a game and I think this is one of the best. Chalk is a really solid idea that’s really well implemented—as a concept alone, it would be an interesting time-waster—but the real magic is in the format and structure of the game around it, which takes you through a number of “arcadey” levels with dramatically different settings and unique boss fights.

I have heard some people prefer to play the game with a Stylus (a Wacom tablet or somesuch) but I like the mouse better for some reason.

4 Chalk-em-up
While I’m no stranger to the draw-things-to-do-things method of gameplay thanks to the sheer number of Nintendo DS games that have adopted that strategy, if for no other reason than the touchscreen is the DS’s one major gimmick and the one that they’re pushing hard. But I have to admit, nothing on the DS that I’ve played feels quite as natural with the formula as Chalk does.

The basic premise is simple, draw lines to damage enemies. It’s how it’s done that works well. The chalk lines stick around for a few seconds, meaning that you can use them as a shield against incoming enemies. Green enemies require you to “connect the dots”, touching every green-dotted edge before they die. Yellow enemies are a bit trickier – you wait until they shoot at you, and draw a line connecting at least one bullet with them. The more bullets you hit, the more damage you do, which means that if lots of them swarm you at once you can do massive damage with only a little effort. And blue enemies don’t like each other, so if you drag them on top of each other they explode. On the surface, this all seems pretty simple, but the fact is that it works amazingly well. I mean, really, it’s more imaginative than most shooters, whose formula is “THE BULLETS GO INTO THE BAD THINGS”.

Chalk has a very smooth difficulty curve, getting quite tough as the game goes on. It’s a good bet for kids as well as the hardcore shooter fan, and both atmospheric and inventive. Just don’t try playing it with the “mouse only” control scheme – while a good idea in theory, it’s terrible in practice. Right-clicking to move your character to a new spot is clumsy and tends to make you frantic when things get messy on-screen. It’s better to use the WASD keys, and to devote the mouse to chalking things up.