Fantastic Contraption

I will warn you know, this game has eaten almost every second of my spare time in the last 72 hours. It got under my skin in a way that not many games have before.

What we have here is a physics game. You are presented with an object around which you must construct your Fantastic Contraption from the various tools available to you, making sure that it’s fit to get to the goal zone by negotiating whatever obstacles, puzzles and landscapes that are put in front of you by the devious level designers .

I’ll refrain from showing you many of my solutions in the spirit of fair game, but the wonderful thing about Fantastic Contraption is that there’s a limitless number of ways that each level can be solved. Naturally the early levels are very easy as you get used to the tools at your disposal, but as you progress there are some devilishly difficult scenes to beat.

There are three types of wheel from which you can construct your device; clockwise moving, anti-clockwise moving and neutral (it only goes anywhere when shoved in a particular direction). In addition there are two types of struts with which to build the frames and connect wheels; water struts which are more bendy and can pass through other parts of the contraption, and wooden, which are more sturdy and can’t pass through anything. So, 5 materials to go at and manipulate as you choose. To be honest, the best bet is not for me to explain too much about the game mechanics, but for you to just jump straight in and start experimenting.

A word about the background music. Yet again this is an example of the music adding to the experience with what is to all intents and purposes a repeating mellow riff. It’s kinda hypnotic and as you play along you’ll notice it’s helping suck you in to the whole thing. If you were listening to, I don’t know, some Megadeth as this was playing out, you’d probably want to stab someone after being stuck for 5 minutes on a level. The music here encourages you to think and work out exactly what you are doing and how this contraption is going to get around that bend or over that big dumb ball.

As I mentioned, the levels get hard. Seriously. WTF?

A couple of them (including the above) had me seriously beat.

Then I discovered the game’s forum. And then I discovered that you can save and share your solutions to levels. And herein lies a good bunch of my fascination with this game. This little feature is fucking brilliant. Playing back other peoples’ solutions to levels and seeing the imagination that goes into some of them has me hooked. And yeah, it’s also helpful if you wanna take a shortcut and cheat a level. I would encourage you not to as far as possible though. Some levels I looked at for 10 or 15 minutes wondering where to even start, but the satisfaction in getting to your solution your own way doesn’t compare with creating a copy or variation on someone else’s.

The only screenie with one of my attempts in it (my caterpillar).

Fot $10 you can get an advanced version of the game which will give you access to extra levels and allow you to construct your own, and play other people’s creations. I think that I shall be investing. I figure that if you are into this kind of stuff (like me) then you will absolutely adore this game. I’m loathed to give it 5 stars because then I have no headroom for future games that fully blow my mind. It’s as near as dammit to full marks though.

4 stars out of 5

Play Fantastic Contraption

Really. Play it. Right now.