I love building. There is something deeply satisfying about sitting back, tinkering for a bit, and coming back some time later to show off what I’ve come up with. I like seeing what I can make and how it all works. I like it in real life too. I get a happy fuzzies when I can take something apart, see how it works, and put it all back together again.

Contraption Maker, while not a perfect expression of this feeling, gets close enough that I have still have great fondness for it.

i luff bucket

Contraption Maker is a building puzzle game. Players are presented with a goal - such as “Get character A to point B” - and are given a few pieces and the whole of physics with which to solve the puzzle. These pieces do a variety of things, from shooting lasers to starting fires to just providing a platform on which to walk. When supplemented with the pieces already pre-placed in the puzzle, however, these simple pieces still offer a range of possibilities for solving whatever puzzle the player faces.

In addition to solving official puzzles, the game also includes a creation mode, where players can create puzzles and upload them. As a result, there is never really an “end” to Contraption Maker. There is just a long series of puzzles of widely ranging difficulty.

And sometimes, you just have rope.

Indeed, it is this range of difficulty that is one of my major criticisms of the game. For all the possibility its range of parts offers, the official puzzles seem solidly planted in either the “trivially easy” or “absurdly difficult” camps. While players are free to choose puzzles from any level at any point, the sheer number of puzzles means that getting to the more challenging puzzles can feel like a slog. Once at the more challenging puzzles, their difficulty spikes, leaving the player caught between puzzles that are either too easy, or ones they don’t feel they have the knowledge of resources to solve.

This spike in difficulty is compounded by the game’s lack of hints. While the game does offer a way to see the official solution for a level, this is the only hint it offers, and then, only once the level has been solved. While this lack of hints does force the player to think creatively and engage more with the puzzle itself, it also heightens the frustration when a player has carefully considered the puzzle and still has no idea how to solve it.

The UI, too, contributes to this frustration. While each item has a little question mark that can be clicked to get an overview of what that item does, that explanation is basic and doesn’t encompass the whole of what the item can actually do. Multiple puzzles require pieces be used in ways that had never previously been demonstrated and which aren’t included on the tooltips. I found these solutions by accident, which left a sour taste in my mouth. Puzzles ought to be clear about what their component pieces do. Otherwise, they cease to be puzzles, and instead become exercises in tedious frustration.

I really feel like Tim should solve his own problems every once in a while.

For all its flaws, though, that fundamental joy of building a machine and watching it run remained ever-present. As frustrated as I got, I got an equal amount of satisfaction when a machine did what I asked it to do, when every little piece fell into place, and a long sequence wound itself through to its conclusion. The range of puzzles available - both official and otherwise - also meant that, when I did get stuck, I could cleanse my palate on a different puzzle, then go look at the old one with fresh eyes. The limited number of pieces also meant each puzzle, though unique, felt familiar and solvable from the outset. All that was required was that I think about it correctly.

Contraption Maker is not a perfect game, but it is a fun game. It is a lovely game of building machines, watching them run, and creating order out of absolute chaos.

Developer: Kevin Ryan

Genre: Puzzle

Year: 2014

Country: United States

Language: English

Play Time: 16-20 Hours

Youtube: https://youtu.be/epk-GNinslk