Review:
Crazy Machines - Review

Crazy Machines Complete provides an excellent package of puzzles and design tools, but its insane difficulty level is likely to make all but the most precocious gamer feel like a dunce. 

There are plenty of videogames that easily defy the “are our children learning something?” criticism the industry so often carries. It doesn’t take much effort to argue that Theme Park teaches business principals, while Tetris and its million imitators improve lateral thinking and hand to eye coordination. Even World of Warcraft educates littluns on the virtues of learning a craft and saving one’s pennies. Likewise, it’s difficult to imagine even the most sceptical engineering or physics teacher begrudging their pupils a few hours on Crazy Machines, a game that asks you to complete, and eventually build, “Rube Goldberg” machine; overly complicated contraptions for the most simple of tasks.

Anyone who recalls Doc Brown’s dog feeding device from the beginning of Back to the Future, erupted painfully at the episode of Family Guy where Peter Griffin builds one such elaborate contraption only for it to shoot him in the arm, or is old enough to remember The Incredible Machine or the board game Mouse Trap will have a clear enough idea of what a Rube Goldberg machine is. These elaborate set-ups follow a domino effect: ball hits switch, turns on torch, burns string, releases hammer, hits nail. Part of the fun in designing these contraptions – and there are enough on YouTube to suggest people do – is finding the most elaborate and indirect way of hammering that nail, cooking a sausage or powering a light bulb.

If all this talk of pointless technical application is enough to whet your appetite, then Crazy Machine Complete may be the game for you. Essentially it’s a game that serves two purpose; primarily as a puzzle game, secondly as a surprisingly comprehensive virtual Rube Goldberg machine designer. While the Crazy Machines Complete package may contain both Crazy Machines and the 1.5 successor, each of the three games included are essentially the same, bar a different visual style and difficulty.