"A remake of The Incredible Machine? Aw man, I always wanted to play that when I was young!"

In short, Contraption Maker is a puzzle game about making Rube Goldberg-type machines to solve some sort of problem. Put the basketball in the box, get the tool guy home safely, feed the dog, break the lamp, fire the rocket. Simple enough, right?

Well, it falls into one of the problems you typically run into when making a sandbox puzzle game: Each puzzle typically has either one blindingly obvious solution, because all of the other possibilities have been prevented at great effort, or it has several solutions, each more convoluted than the last, and the player is likely to come up with a solution which is radically different from what the puzzle designer intended. Often a solution which doesn't resemble the intended one, and which typically doesn't use most of the parts made available, or which exploits something the designers never considered.

All fine and good, right? The whole point of games like this is to come up with a creative solution. The game even includes a video recording feature so that you can make a video of your favorite solutions and upload them to Youtube.

Well, except that sometimes the "solution" is not entirely clear, and because of this, the player may end up spending time solving the puzzle only to find out that what they thought was a "solved" state is... not? And there aren't any hints of any sort available in-game to help guide players towards the expected goal.

I play puzzle games for the sense of accomplishment I get when I figure something out. Or to learn new tricks when I'm forced to give up and check what the "official" solution was supposed to be. After completing most of the puzzles in this game, I never once got that sense of satisfaction. I always felt like I was fighting against the puzzle designers, not figuring things out on my own, and as a result I found myself more and more prone to using cheap tricks and underhanded techniques to bypass what the puzzle designer no doubt thought would be clever contraptions. I viewed playing the game as less "What's the next puzzle I get to solve?" and more "Well, I paid the money for it, I should probably finish it."

Finally, of course, I mentioned inexact objectives and that I only finished most of the levels? Well I ran into one level in particular which stated a fairly simple goal(put a pair of jack-o-lanterns in a cardboard box), but upon completing the objective, I found that the simulation continued running, refusing to give me credit for solving the puzzle. There's also one puzzle I was only able to solve using a glitch in the physics engine, and consiquentially my solution worked exactly once and was not reproducible(since each simulation run is subject to some randomness). I've come to expect a higher level of quality from the free puzzle games I play, let alone the ones that I'm willing to lay down cash for. Physics glitches should never be valid solutions.

Also one of the songs sounds like an old west saloon remix of Maralyn Manson's "The Beautiful People," which I thought was hilarious.

"A remake of The Incredible Machine? Aw man, I always wanted to play that when I was young!" In short, Contraption Maker is a puzzle game about making Rube Goldberg-type machines to solve some sort of problem. Put the basketball in the box, get the tool guy home safely, feed the dog, break the lamp, fire the rocket. Simple enough, right? Well, it falls into one of the problems you typically run into when making a sandbox puzzle game: Each puzzle typically has either one blindingly obvious solution, because all of the other possibilities have been prevented at great effort, or it has several solutions, each more convoluted than the last, and the player is likely to come up with a solution which is radically different from what the puzzle designer intended. Often a solution which doesn't resemble the intended one, and which typically doesn't use most of the parts made available, or which exploits something the designers never considered. All fine and good, right? The whole point of games like this is to come up with a creative solution. The game even includes a video recording feature so that you can make a video of your favorite solutions and upload them to Youtube. Well, except that sometimes the "solution" is not entirely clear, and because of this, the player may end up spending time solving the puzzle only to find out that what they thought was a "solved" state is... not? And there aren't any hints of any sort available in-game to help guide players towards the expected goal. I play puzzle games for the sense of accomplishment I get when I figure something out. Or to learn new tricks when I'm forced to give up and check what the "official" solution was supposed to be. After completing most of the puzzles in this game, I never once got that sense of satisfaction. I always felt like I was fighting against the puzzle designers, not figuring things out on my own, and as a result I found myself more and more prone to using cheap tricks and underhanded techniques to bypass what the puzzle designer no doubt thought would be clever contraptions. I viewed playing the game as less "What's the next puzzle I get to solve?" and more "Well, I paid the money for it, I should probably finish it." Finally, of course, I mentioned inexact objectives and that I only finished most of the levels? Well I ran into one level in particular which stated a fairly simple goal(put a pair of jack-o-lanterns in a cardboard box), but upon completing the objective, I found that the simulation continued running, refusing to give me credit for solving the puzzle. There's also one puzzle I was only able to solve using a glitch in the physics engine, and consiquentially my solution worked exactly once and was not reproducible(since each simulation run is subject to some randomness). I've come to expect a higher level of quality from the free puzzle games I play, let alone the ones that I'm willing to lay down cash for. Physics glitches should never be valid solutions. Also one of the songs sounds like an old west saloon remix of Maralyn Manson's "The Beautiful People," which I thought was hilarious.