Numpty Physics

About the game

In Numpty Physics you solve puzzles by drawing. Each level is a hand-drawn scene with a red object somewhere and a yellow one somewhere else, and you win when the red one touches the yellow one. Between them there is usually a gap, a wall or a drop, and the way across is whatever you can sketch with the pen.

Every stroke you draw becomes a real object in a physics simulation. It behaves like a rigid piece of wire, and the longer it is, the heavier it is. A closed shape, like a circle or a box, is just a wire bent into that form, so it has weight only along its outline. Wheels roll, ramps slide, planks tip over and heavy things fall, so the same idea can work or fail depending on where you put it and how big you make it.

The part that makes it more than a sketchbook is the joints. When you finish a stroke with its end close to another stroke, it attaches there as a pivot. That lets you build levers, seesaws, pendulums and swinging doors, and strokes that are joined together do not collide with each other, so you can make an arm or a hinge out of two lines. The game has several pens and tools, a pause button so you can build while time is stopped, and an editor with which you can draw your own levels.

The game comes with more than a hundred levels in over twenty collections: the tutorial and the standard set, and a large number of levels made by people who sent them in. Some are easy and some take a while, and there is almost always more than one way to solve them.

Playing it here

This is Numpty Physics 0.3.10, compiled for the browser from the project's source code. The download is about 3 MB and the game plays offline once it has loaded. The levels you solve and the levels you draw yourself are kept in this browser; clearing this site's data deletes them. The game is in English.

The title screen is already a level: draw a line that pushes the red "Start" tag onto the yellow star. When the level is solved, press "next" and keep going, or open the menu on the left to pick a collection.

Controls

On a touchscreen, draw with a finger and swipe from the right edge for the pen options and from the left edge for the game options.

Tips

Think in wire. A line is a stick, not a surface. To hold something up, draw a shape with some width, or put several lines together.

Use the joints. A stroke that ends right next to another one pivots on it. Draw one long plank and fix one of its ends to a wall or to another stroke to make a lever.

Pause while you build. Press Space and draw something complicated while the world is frozen, then press Space again to see what it does.

Mind the weight. The longer a stroke is, the heavier it is, so a long stroke that falls on something pushes it hard.

A different pen, a different job. The tool menu has strokes that never move (ground), strokes that stay still until something hits them (sleepy) and strokes that are only decoration. The in-game help calls drawing a red thing right on top of the yellow one a cheat's solution.

FAQ

Can I draw my own levels? Yes. Open the menu on the left, choose edit and draw the scene. The levels you save stay in this browser.

Are my levels saved? Yes. The levels you solve are recorded, and the ones you draw are kept, in this browser.

Does it work on a phone or tablet? The game was made for touchscreens, and the page works with a finger; a computer with a mouse is more precise.

Credits

Numpty Physics was started by Tim Edmonds in 2008 and is developed today by Thomas Perl, as free software under the GNU GPL version 3 or later. The physics is Box2D by Erin Catto. The levels were drawn by Tim Edmonds, Thomas Perl and many players, among them Siminz, ioan ghip, The Noodleman, Nelson Gesualdi, Alan Bruce, keith, Gawan and bubba. The text font is Source Sans Pro Light by Adobe (SIL Open Font License 1.1). See the license file and the source code, which are hosted with the game.