For example, I found "Bombs Away" to be one of the hardest puzzles in the game, but it's not in the hardest difficulty level. This wouldn't be too bad, but I found that the difficulty for the later levels wasn't evenly paced. You're expected to beat almost all of the puzzles in the later difficulty levels before the last ones are unlocked. The game doesn't unlock levels evenly enough.As you reach the more complex puzzles, they become obnoxiously difficult requiring you to play with them, often for hours, to finally figure out, if you're able to at all.Too many of the levels are like this for my taste. For example, "Attack of the Pachyderms" requires you to coordinate the very specific placement of four elephants and requires a reset every time they aren't perfect. A lot of puzzles are less about figuring out the solution and more about getting the placement of a tool just perfect.Rather than require you to finish levels individually before opening the next, the game opens blocks of levels as you progress, allowing you to skip levels that you're stuck on and come back to them later.The silly sound effects are also dead-on. The music, which uses a combination of classical, traditional, and Loony Tunes rips-offs, fits the game perfectly.The game does a pretty good job of holding the player's hand in the beginning stages, teaching them how to use the bulk of the devices in the game.Few other games of the time were able to capture the silliness of the Western cartoon style in a video game. Modern physics engines often include rounding errors that prevent such precision. I also like that it is fully determined so that every time you replay a game with the same setup, it will play out exactly the same way every time. For 1993, the physics engine is very impressive.The theme of the game is lots of fun and it's certainly helped by the colorful cartoon style.I do not own the game, but I've beaten it. I got stuck on two puzzles and needed a hint to push me in the right direction, but, other than that, I unlocked and solved every puzzle in the game, finishing it on. Many years later, knowing I had better patience for puzzle games than when I was a child, I sat down and tried to beat the Windows 3 port of the game. This was my first introduction in The Incredible Machine series. Still in D-Fend Reloaded choose the game you want to play and press 'Run'.The Windows demo version of The Incredible Toon Machine was included along with another Sierra On-Line game that my cousins had in the mid-1990s, and we had a lot of fun playing the limited and rather buggy levels.Open D-Fend Reloaded, go to File->Import->Import Folder and choose the folder where you extracted the game.Extract the zip file contents to a folder and remember the path.Click on the Download Now button above.Note: This game is for DOS and to play it on computers with newer versions of Windows you will need a DOS 'emulator' like D-Fend Reloaded. (For example "Place the toaster here" or "We need to move that cat with a conveyor belt"). The engine does not use a random number generator in its simulation of physics, assuring that the results for any given "machine" are reproducible. Notably, the games simulated not only the physical interactions between objects, but also ambient effects like varying air pressure and gravity. There is also a "freeform" option that allows the user to "play" with all the objects with no set goal or to also build their own puzzles with goals for other players to attempt to solve. The levels usually have some fixed objects that cannot be moved by the player, and so the only way to solve the puzzle is carefully arrange the given objects around the fixed items. Available objects ranged from simple ropes and pulleys to electrical generators, bowling balls, and even cats and mice to humans, most of which had specific interactions with or reactions to other objects (for example, mice will run towards nearby cheese). The general goal of the games is to create a series of Rube Goldberg devices: arrange a given collection of objects in a needlessly complex fashion so as to perform some simple task (for example, "put the ball into a box" or "start a mixer & turn on a fan".). In terms of gameplay, this version provided the biggest addition to the series, while subsequent updates were basically only ports of the game to newer operating systems with updated graphics/sounds and sometimes new puzzles, but no new parts. It also improved on the "freeform" mode, allowing players to create completely playable puzzles by defining not only the participating parts, but also the set of circumstances under which the puzzle will be considered "solved". The Incredible Machine 2 introduced new levels, an extended assortment of parts, a new interface, significantly improved graphics, sounds, and music, and two player hotseat play.
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