The Incredible Machine Review

Costas Stephanides’s Review

Where did I leave my flux capacitor?

Us Brits have a reputation for enjoying a bit of a tinker in the back shed and we even introduced the patent system (and multi million pound law suit) to the world. Where would we be without Clive Sinclair, James Dyson and Trevor Bayliss?

The Incredible Machine does its bit for harvesting ingenuity by putting the fun back into Engineering. As the mad prof you have to solve various challenges with only the contents of your utility belt. It is a pretty big belt and can hold all sorts of things from an egg timer to lasers. Place the objects on the screen and assuming everything is aligned correctly press # and watch the egg timer turn on the fan which drives a conveyor which carries the ball which goes through the pipe and blows up the dynamite to launch the rocket. Or if you are a true British inventor watch it go plop and start again.

There are 80 levels altogether and the difficulty curve is pretty decent. The most trouble you will encounter at the early stages are the controls and the variety of objects. There are probably about 20 different objects and while some are obvious, the finer points of some are tricky to work out. There is a help section which spells out each object and it would be wise to cast your eye over this and get a feel of the logic before plunging straight in. The controls are a little cumbersome. * opens your inventory, scroll along and press 5 to select an object and use the Dpad to place it on the work area, 7 can be used to rotate/flip the object, and press 5 again to confirm its position and orientation. For the later levels, just throw everything onto the table and then work your way through the problem.

You can only progress to the next level once the current level is complete. Solve the challenge after the first attempt to receive an A grade. The game saves all your grades for your bragging rights later and the only way to improve your individual grades is to reset the game.

As you play through the game, you will unlock wallpapers, background music and extra hard levels. This does provide some variety to the game but you will ultimately find yourself resetting and playing from scratch once everything has been completed.