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The Incredible Machine
The following review is written by Goldfish for the Game Maker newsletter
The Incredible Machine by Simon Donkers.This was my favorite from the first GM challenge, scoring 17 votes 9.88%, it came in 6th place, so not too bad.
The incredible Machine is a puzzle game, on each level you are given a
different challenge and you must arrange square blocks and medicine
balls, so that when the football is released it intercepts your placed
objects and fulfills its objective.
Although its quite a simple game, its
difficult to explain, but if you look at the screen shot
to the right.
The football has to hit the bear, it has been released from the top
left corner of the screen and fallen down until it hits the angled
block, it then bounces across the screen hitting the center block
and bouncing again, before hitting the end block, ricocheting off
the wall and falling in the fire. ( Well you didn't think I was going
to give you the solution did you. 
)
You move the blocks by dragging and
dropping them and they can be rotated by clicking on the
arrow which appears when you are moving them.
There are also medicine balls available, these give less
directional control than the blocks, but add more bounce
to your ball.
The Go and Stop icons are used to test the placement of
your blocks, until you figure out a solution.
The game has ten levels and your
progress is saved at the end of each level, its possible
to complete all the levels with the objects given,
although a couple of cheats are given in the help file,
if you are really stuck.
The games title screen is simple but with a nice little
animation that helps illustrate the game and the help
file is very good.
In conclusion, perhaps not the most
original game, but it will keep you interested for a
time, the controls are good once you realise the objects
snap to a grid as you release them.
The puzzles could be a bit harder and more of them would be nice.
Given the limitations of the challenge a good little game
and it gets my vote any day.
Visit Simon Donkers web site here:
http://www.simondonkers.tk