Magic Pengel: The Quest for Color

Magic Pengel is an... interesting game. It's like a monster raising game, except without any of the raising part. It's like a monster collecting game except without any of the collecting. It's still a really good game. See, you start the game off with two part palettes, four colors, a single brush, and a small amount of lines. Then, using the power of your Pengel (they look like little angels), you get to draw Doodles.

Yes, you get to draw them. It does get a bit tricky because you are drawing 2D shapes that then get 3D-ized in various ways, depending on how you align them and which brush you use. I'll give an example, because it's kinda hard to describe. Let's say you want to draw a sphere. That's pretty easy. Just pick the 'thick' brush, and draw a circle wherever you want. It'll come out fairly roundish, maybe with a few small irregularities. Now, let's say you want to give the sphere a shadow. First, you'd have to make a connection point at the bottom of the sphere, to tell the game you want the new shape to be connected there. Then, select the 'very thin' brush, and tilt the camera so you are looking straight down (or else the shadow will be tilted at an angle), and draw another circle. So now, hopefully, you have a nice little shadow for your sphere-thing.

However, what if you want, say, a hat for your thing? When you get to the more complex shapes, you usually have to simplify or make them out of several shapes. You can't rotate the camera while drawing, so you can't make a complex shape (like a spiky ball) in just one pen stroke.

You battle in a few places, but the two most used arenas are the Seaside Arena, and the Official Arena. At the Seaside Arena you battle other townspeople for new colors, more colors, and experience points for your Doodles (which do not level up). At the Official Arena you battle for more Lines (which means larger Doodles) and more part palettes (like Arm, Leg and Wing).

It is possible to create a total of six Doodles at a time, and you can use any three of them in battle. A Doodle's stats are mostly dependant on how many colors used in it's creation, and the shape of it's body parts (long, thin parts give an Agility bonus, for example). The various colors used determine the Doodle's skills (you can only have punch attacks if you have arms) and type (Attack, Magic, or Block type).

The actual fighting system is simple: You have four actions you can take: Attack, Block, Magic, Charge. However, only three of them can be picked each turn. On the first turn, 'Charge' cannot be selected. On all other turns, whichever skill used last cannot be used. Also, there are 'Seal' magics that make a Doodle unable to use certain abilities (Attack, Magic, Block, Charge, Same, Random). Magic also takes MP to cast. Each Doodle has several different Attack skills, one Block skill, and two to four Magic skills. The three main abilities have a RPS relationship, with Magic beating Attack beating Block beating Magic. Charge loses to everything else. If one Doodle attacks and the other casts magic, then the magic hits and the attack does not. If the Doodles select the same type of skill, then whichever one has higher Agility attacks first. Using Charge restores HP and raises the damage that Doodle can do for the next turn.

There are a total of eleven part palettes, six brushes, and twenty-seven colors (five types of color) to choose from. The part palettes range from body parts like arms or a head to things that spin or wiggle. There is also a 'Weapon' type, which has to be attached to an arm. Of the brushes, four are normal brushes of varying thickness, while the other two create sharp-angled shapes, like squares or trapezoids. The color types are fairly simple: Red type, Green type, Blue type, Yellow type, and colorless. Each of the four main types have six colors each, while colorless has three (White, Grey, Black)

sources: GameFAQS for basic game information, the game's manual, the game