Complete Satisfaction Guarantee:
Free and timely technical support is always an e-mail away.
In the extremely rare event I cannot get this title to work on your system I will take it back for a full refund. All I ask is minimal assistance from you during the troubleshooting process.
The Game
In the Incredible Machine you must complete a series of tasks given two
different sets of tools. One set, on the work area when you start the
level, are beyond your control. You either have to work with or around
them. The placement of the other set, shown in the parts bin to the right
of the work area, is controlled by the player. To solve the problems (of
which there are 85), you move some or all of the parts over to the work
area. If a part just can not be put in the current position, a red X
will appear on top of part being moved. You can't drop the part until the
X goes away. That's it, and most levels can be solved in 10 to 20
minutes of work. However, some of the puzzles can take you hours of
staring and tinkering to get right. In a lot of ways, these puzzles are
what the game is all about. Some parts get moved by mere pixels for
optimal positioning, and completely reviewing your strategy is occasionally
needed. The programmers modeled the behavior of quite a few objects and
tools above and beyond just ballistic arcs, and you don't have to find the
one, specific solution the designer had in mind. Any machine that does the
trick is fine with TIM. Almost half the fun is finding other, even more
interesting, ways of doing things. For example: on the first puzzle (the
one with the walk-thru in the manual), I came up with an alternate solution
that only used two belts.
Finally, there is the Free Form Machine. Here, you have access to all of the
parts in the game, including quite a few you never could use in the game
itself. I found the free form mode extremely useful for testing things to
use in a puzzle (for instance, to definitively find out if Pokey the Cat
would fit through a certain-sized hole). Although I'm sure there will be
traffic in sharing machine designs, Free Form didn't interest me that much
after I completed all the puzzles. More often, I found myself going back to
favorite levels and looking for more solutions. However, I must admit there
is a definite enjoyment factor in setting off an entire screen worth of
dynamite.
In The Incredible Machine, Sierra created a game apparently targeted at the legion of Lemmings fans, with a good, healthy dose of Rube
Goldberg thrown in. Instead of controlling a bunch of dim-witted
mammals intent on walking straight ahead, you assemble the pieces of a
fantastic mechanism to achieve your goal. Both are games for people who
really enjoy problem solving.
Note: My compatibility CD does not alter the retail game or bypass copy protection. It allows the original media to install and run correctly on any modern version of Windows.
On May-01-12 at 22:59:36 PDT, seller added the following information:
cnewman1966 Store
