Anybody who played any of The Incredible Machine games back in the days of Windows 3.1 will probably be familiar with the premise of Crazy Machines, build a contraption to do a menial task such as cooking a sausage or hammering a nail into a plank in the most overly elaborate way possible, a la Rube Goldberg.  Once assembled you can flick the switch and watch your contraption do its job, which in itself can be very satisfying in a Mouse Trap kind of way.

The games interface is well laid out and uncluttered.  You’ll see the build area displayed in the center, which will usually have some fixed pieces of the puzzle in place.  On the right side of the screen you have a list of the available parts for the level which you then just drag and drop into place, and if you can’t figure out what something is for then just hovering over it will give you a brief description.  Not all parts will fit straight away though, many will need rotating or flipping which is easily achieved by hovering over a piece and bringing up the easy interaction menu.  In the bottom right of the HUD you have a few buttons which do the obvious things like start and stop the action, reset the screen

With over 200 puzzles included there is plenty to sink your teeth into and the difficulty curve feels spot on, the later levels being truly fiendish, but if that’s not enough for you then the game also includes a lab mode where you can make your own puzzles using any of the bits, adding a whole extra depth to the game.

As you’d expect from this type of game, the graphics and sound aren’t up to the standards of Crysis, but that doesn’t detract from anything as they’re good enough for the task at hand, and the graphical effects like fire and electricity from certain lab pieces are a nice touch.  The sound effects are also pretty good, it’s pretty obvious that the got sound samples from bouncing balls, etc. to get it as realistic as possible.  You do get some old white haired professor pop-up at the start of each level trying to sound clever or funny, and failing miserably, but luckily you can turn him off in the menus so he’ll only irritate you for as long as you can stand it.

In addition to Crazy Machines also bundled in the package is Inventors Training Camp, which is more of the same really, adding another 101 puzzles, but this time aimed at a slightly younger audience.  As you would expect the interface is made more colourful and the difficulty toned down a little, but otherwise is just the same as CM. Inventors Training Camp seems a great way to give kids a bit of a mental workout stealthily masquerading as a video game.

Crazy Machines doesn’t bring anything new to the table as far as physics puzzle games go, but more than makes up for that with the pure volume of content that you get for your £20, and with the almost unlimited replay value of the lab mode you can’t go far wrong.

8/10

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