Game Reviews

The Incredible Machine

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The Incredible Machine

It's a risky business being an amateur inventor. Okay, so it doesn't take much to build a shed at the bottom of the garden and fill it with suitable tools. But the chances of ultimate success and fame are slim.

Strike it lucky, and you'll invent the next essential gadget, make millions, and appear on the cover of Time magazine. In most cases though, you're more likely to come up with just a parade of useless contraptions, while even the staff at Crap Eccentric Inventor Monthly magazine won't take your calls.

Still, it's a dream for many of us, and The Incredible Machine lets you live out that dream without fear of ending up a lonely old man in a dog-eared lab coat.

The idea: employ your invention skills to solve 80 puzzles, using a host of objects from hedge trimmers, egg timers and magnifying glasses through to lasers, anti-gravity pads and dynamite. (All bought from B&Q, presumably.)

Here's how it works. Each level presents you with an objective, which can be as simple as 'put the ball in the box' (level 18). On-screen, you'll see a few objects – a ball and a box in this case – and you'll have access to some more in your inventory, which can be placed on-screen in order to accomplish the objective.

Objects can be rotated and positioned wherever you like, and once you're happy, pressing 'HASH' starts the experiment, so you can see if your solution has worked. If not, it's back to the drawing board.

Many objects work together, for example positioning a mirror in front of a laser will divert the beam, while knocking a basketball into a plug socket can turn on a toaster. The fun of The Incredible Machine comes in figuring out what works with what, and how to position objects to trigger everything at the right time.

And trust us, it is fun. It was originally a PC game in the mid-1990s, but the format works perfectly on mobile, with its restricted level sizes and simple controls. Advancing through the 80 levels is a joy, with some levels extremely simple (to introduce new objects) and others brain-bendingly hard.

There are 60 main levels, and then 20 bonus levels that are unlocked as you work your way through the main ones. At their toughest, you can easily spend 10-15 minutes painstakingly plotting what object to place where, giving you a huge rush if you get it right.

You're assessed on each level with a mark from A to E, depending on how many times it took you to get a level right. The regular mode has you playing through the levels in order, while Free Mode lets you pick any individual one that you've unlocked.

The graphics are simple and effective – you don't need 3D animated cut-scenes, after all – while the sound is just a theme tune which, if we're honest, becomes annoying fairly quickly.

But it's all about the brains, and on that score The Incredible Machine delivers in spades. The 60 main levels will keep you puzzling for hours, while the bonus levels are truly fiendish, providing bags of depth. It's not a traditional brain-training game, but it'll certainly put your grey cells through their paces.

The Incredible Machine

Excellent invent-'em-up that will provide hours of entertainment
Score
Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)