Gerbil Physics has one thing going for it: a name that makes people do a double take. Ok, at least it makes me and my brother with a similar juvenile sense of humor laugh. After the giggling and the funny looks subside, I can agree that the title is at least accurate and descriptive. You’ll be placing bombs, using disintegrating guns, and using the lay of the land to move blocks full of little gerbils down to the lower half of the screen. Your goal is to get them under a yellow line.
Ok, the good thing that this game actually has going for it is that it's fun. It's just fun to blow up the little blocks of gerbils and watch them fly across the screen while they scream "Weeee!" It's the way these physics games are usually satisfying. You nudge a giant tower of blocks and then watch everything come down in a satisfying way.
The puzzles in this game are, of course, set up in a way that makes that goal of getting all the gerbils under that yellow line a challenge. It is a pretty well designed game in this respect. You’re required to think pretty hard on some levels, and you’re given limited resources. Some levels even have groups of red gerbil blocks that are forbidden to touch. So you can’t go wild and blow everything up; you have to think around this problem.
You’re given a variety of tools such as mini explosions, bombs, and disintegrating ray guns. The environments themselves are often the tools you need as well. There are environmental aspects of the puzzle like steel plates you can tip over to turn the level in your favor, for example. There are also swinging hammers, exploding skulls, watermelons and penguins. Of course, there are exploding penguins, as well.
