Machine Maker

Machine Maker is a chain reaction puzzle set in a cosy inventor's workshop. Every challenge starts with a ball waiting in a chute or a lever ready to flick, a goal somewhere across the pegboard and a few shelves already screwed to the wall: get the ball into the basket, ring the bell, light the candles on the birthday cake or send the toy rocket up through the roof. From the tray you place ramps and planks, a seesaw, a trampoline, a fan that blows sideways, a spring, a bucket on a pulley, a conveyor belt, a balloon, a bowling ball, dominoes, a magnet and a switch that starts a motor. Parts snap to the grid, a ghost shows where they will land, and many of them turn.

Press Test and the physics runs, a fixed-step simulation that gives exactly the same result on every device, so a machine that works once works every time. Balls bounce, dominoes topple, the seesaw catapults, the fan pushes, and a balloon that drifts into the tacks pops softly into confetti. Nothing breaks: press Back and your layout is exactly as you left it. Forty brain-teasing challenges grow from a single ramp to grand machines with three goals at once, and each one awards three stars: reach the goal, stay within the part limit, and match par. Every challenge has been proven solvable.

Free build is the place to relax: a big workshop with every part in unlimited supply, twenty save slots in your browser, a Photo button for your favourite contraption and a loop mode that resets the machine and runs it again every time it finishes. Undo and redo go fifty steps back, the eraser tidies up, and the zoom buttons, the mouse wheel or a pinch get you close to the details.