There is no story to Chalk, so we'll just skip that entirely and move on to the visuals and audio. Both are exceptionally well done, with top-notch sound work and some excellently done sprites complementing each other beautifully. Perhaps the most intriguing effect of all is the line of chalk that the player can draw. It is so well done that it looks exactly what chalk looks like! Not only that, but the enemies have a cohesive design and the surreal background definitely does not detract from the whole backage. Seeing random numbers and equations float by is incredibly entertaining. Finally, the music is absolutely wonderful: easy to follow, but extremely affecting in a nostalgic, emotional way. In a way, the music feels like... a chalkboard. And that's excellent!

The gameplay of Chalk revolves around using your ability to draw lines for several uses. You must move around and avoid enemies and bullets as you draw your way to victory. Where the game becomes interesting, however, is how every method of destruction is different from another. The three main uses for your chalk are to:

• Destroy large blocks with green spokes, or even just a line with green spokes. All you must do is draw a single, continuous line across all the green circles to clear. You do not have to follow the path of the object at all, so if you have a rectangle with dots at opposing corners, it would be a good idea to just draw diagonally across. You can link these obstacles to enemies or other obstacles; see the scoring discussion below.
  
• Destroy enemies by attaching them to a bullet. All enemies shoot bullets at you, and by drawing a line from the bullets to the enemies, you deal them damage. This effect occurs for every enemy the line touches, and is increased with additional bullets. For example, if two enemies fire at you at the same time, you can collect both bullets and destroy them both with a single line.
• Building walls to keep from taking damage from bullets. While relatively self-explanatory at earlier levels, it's when the bullets begin to bounce that things get interesting. Purple bullets are absorbed, and white bullets bounce. This ties into the interesting scoring mechanic discussed later on.
  

While all of these things on their own are relatively normal, it's when you toss in the scoring that things begin to get complicated. High-end scoring is based around clearing the screen of as much as possible in a single stroke. These main bonuses that go along with this are multi-kill, overkill, and the bounce bonus. Multi-kill is where you clear multiple obstacles at once. For example, if you clear two rotating lines, or a rotating line and an enemy, you get a multi-kill. Overkill is only applicable to enemies you kill by firing, and is the result of getting more bullets than necessary to kill it (for example, three bullets on a two bullet enemies). Finally, there is the bounce bonus, which gives a bonus for any bullets that have been bounced that you used against an enemy. These elements are your bread and butter, and if you don't use them, you will most likely never rise beyond the C-rank.

The design of the game is truly fantastic. While maintaining this relatively simple, but puzzle like mechanic, konjak expertly weaved in shmup elements such as the constantly scrolling screen and enemies that hurl bullets at you. As well as bosses. Can't forget the bosses! The bosses revolve around a gimmick, much like any boss. For example, you defeat the first boss by attacking his belly button with bullets (sound familiar?) None of them are especially super challenging, but to get a decent rank, you will definitely need to know them inside out. You'll get this over several tries, until you are expertly beating each level to try and get just the little higher score needed to get the next rank. It's quite addicting.

The biggest complaint about Chalk is the possible lack of replayability. Sure, there are ratings, but those usually only ever appeal to the hardcore shmup crowd that wants to measure their success in definitive terms. There's no online leaderboard, and the game is pretty much solo. You can only track your score against yourself, unfortunately. The levels do have a fair bit of replayability even without rankings, though, and that is to find the most efficient path through each level. The relative shortness and lack of replayability is about the only thing wrong with Chalk, and it's so minor that you will barely even notice it!

Indie shmups are always in high supply, but not normally high quality. Only a few developers have tackled the subject with any seriousness and dedication, and even less with the same level of creativity and cleverness present in this single game from konjak. If you enjoy puzzle games, shmups, or just indie gaming in general, you have to play Chalk. You can download it from konjak's official website, as well as check out his other excellent games.. Sorry folks, Windows only. For now, anyway.

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