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Crazy Machines: The Wacky Contraptions Game

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Crazy Machines: The Wacky Contraptions Game

(149 customer reviews)

SKU:

00MPP7-000

In Stock

Availability: Usually ships in 1 business days

Turn the crank, rotate the gears, push the levers, use the catapult, explode it, or fly it... From grilling sausages with a pulley, gears, rubberbands and a candle to firing a cannon with a basketball, these wacky brainteasers will light up your imagination with creative and addictive fun!!

List Price:	$9.99
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Product Details

Package Length:	7.6 inches
Package Width:	5.3 inches
Package Height:	1.2 inches
Package Weight:	0.05 pounds
Average Customer Rating:	based on 149 reviews

System Requirements

Platform:	Windows Vista / Windows XP / Mac OS X
Media:	CD-ROM
Item Quantity:	1

Features

Build imaginative machines in this creative and addictively fun brainteaser
Turn cranks, rotate gears, pull levers, and more to build unique contraptions
Solve more than 200 challenging puzzles; put your machines to work
Physics engine with air-pressure, electricity, gravity, and particle effects
Experiment with gears, robots, explosives, and more in your own virtual lab

Customer Reviews

Average Customer Review: 4.0

( 149 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

152 of 158 found the following review helpful:

Great Game, Poorly Documented Dec 07, 2005 By J. Garson "artist and technophile"
First of all, let me say that this is a great game. It's loads of fun for the whole family to play, and it runs smoothly on even my older Mac G4.

That said. My whole family was stumped about what to do when plugging cords into machines in the game. If you've run out of plugs, the other end of the cord just floats there, and you cannot continue the game! Nowhere in the manual does it mention that you can give up on a cord by pressing the 'ESC' key. I suppose that's a good key to choose, and it makes sense, but they simply forgot to mention it in the manual, and we wasted a whole day trying to play the game and getting stuck over and over.

98 of 100 found the following review helpful:

North Dakota Kid Sep 24, 2006
I am 8 years old and I got Crazy Machines for my Birthday. This is the best game in the world but if you don't like complicated things you won't this game. The four main things are fire, rope, electronics,and the next one I will let you discover. You can either build your own machine or you can figure out problems that may seem hard but after you've done them awhile they are easy. Some of the things that you can build with are boards, balls, robots, cannons, goo, blimps, cords, gravity controlers, scissors, tubes, and plants. Buy this game and have tons of fun!

221 of 237 found the following review helpful:

Super Fun! Oct 20, 2005 By PA Mom
This is an awesome, good, clean game that will provide hours and hours of entertainment. Remember Rube Goldberg? You can build Rube Goldberg-esque machines and put them into motion. You can also "solve" puzzles by figuring out what things to put where to make your crazy machine do something - like lighting a candle or launching a rocket.

Our kids also like to work together and also with their friends - not always something we see when they play on the computer - so it's great for families and friends to play all together. I like the way the people who made this smuggled the physics in there with the fun. How nice to see intelligence combined with real fun.

(We got this for our kids but we are having fun with it too.)

53 of 55 found the following review helpful:

Fun game, but runs very poorly on Macs Nov 24, 2006 By bobodobo
I have a fairly new Intel iMac and an older G4 Powerbook, and I was looking for games for my mechanically-inclined 5 year old son that would run on Macs. The game does run on both the Intel and G4 Mac, but crashes frequently - one learns to save "inventions" constantly to avoid losing a masterpiece. Also, the sound frequently stops and can't be restored unless you exit and restart the program. And, if that weren't enough, it becomes unbearably slow when you have more than 20 - 30 elements in your "inventions." I also have Parallels for the iMac which allows me to run Windows programs. The PC version would install but refused to run at all in Parallels. Needless to say, it's a very frustrating program, at least for Mac users. From these reviews it appears that some even some "real" PC/Windows users have similar problems. Apart from the Mac problems, the other weakness of the program is that there is very little help available and the (tiny) printed and electronic manuals are not particularly helpful, and there isn't much in the way of "getting started" or "hints." On the other hand, this is supposed to be a "figure it out yourself" type of game, so that's not a major problem.

Having said all that, the game itself is a blast, and my son loves building contraptions with building blocks of electricity (batteries, motors, generators, switches, etc.), fire, light, steam, bouncing balls, explosives, etc. (Think "Rube Goldberg" if that term means anything to you.) I see some resemblance to "real" contraptions I built (with considerably more risk...) as a youngster. The games are challenging, perhaps too challenging, even for adults. And it's technically accurate - for example, in a daisy-chain of light-bulbs and solar panels, each successive light in the chain will be dimmer than the previous one due to losses in transmission. For those to whom it matters, the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics are not violated. (Suggestion to the authors: create a sequel program that allows one to build moving vehicles and obstacle courses based on these building blocks.)

36 of 38 found the following review helpful:

We'd give it 10 stars if we could! Oct 09, 2006 By L "Book Lovin' Mom"
Kids and adults love solving the puzzles. It is a great intro to basic physics (w/o your kids realizing it!) There are problems to solve and you have to place tools (pulleys, balls, dominoes, candles, etc.) in the right place in order for the goal to be accomplished. Our 5 year old needs help; our 8 year old plays alone. Our friends' teenagers enjoy it also.

See all 149 customer reviews on Amazon.com