Crazy Machines 2

Glitches, broken physics make this game unplayable nowadays.

I loved it on Windows 95 but sadly it doesn't work any more. Don't buy!

The game is highly engaging, offering ample playtime and replay value, especially with the addition of DLCs and the ability to create custom levels for others. Although there is a minor technical glitch related to PhyX that affects the official levels, it can be easily disregarded since it does not impact player-made levels.

Dear developers, thank you so much for this great game. I was playing it when I was about 8 years (I don't actually remember). It gives me much nostalgia and makes a calm and cozzy atmpsphere when I play it. There are many experiments, mechanisms, ideas, so, everybody can try their imagination and create someting huge! But before to play it, it doesn't actually work well on new PC hardware, be aware of it and the game servers, from where you can download other players labs, the servers need to be restored. Thanks again!

Best puzzle game ever, next to the original that started it all, Incredible Machine This is much more realistic, cant get enough.

Amazing game, definitely worth the money. I realty enjoy it and it's quite a brain teaser, especially those space levels.

Just install the "NVIDIA PhysX System Software 8.09.04" to fix the problem with unsolvable maps.
The "Nvidia PhysX" as been updated since the game was launched (15 years ago) causing some things to behave differently than they're expected.

I'm sure it's a great game if and when it works, but apparently its use of PhysX is strongly dependent on graphics card, graphics drivers, and even what installation of MS Visual Studio is installed... so more likely than not, your setup is actually incompatible with the puzzle solutions.

This is a really fun game if you can get it to work on computers running Windows 7 or a newer operating system. I needed to install older versions of the Physx drivers to get the game to work. There are other issues to do with for example the Anniversary DLC causing crashes in other parts of the game. There are also a small number of levels that cannot be completed. The game developers probably should have fixed these problems by now. However if you can see past these faults, you can have at least a hundred hours of fun solving hundreds of brilliant puzzles.

Contains game breaking bug where the wheel in one of the puzzles, just stops moving, Even with the solution provided by the game, it's impossible to complete the level.

If you want hours of fun, buy another game.

I wish the game would have been updated for current-gen hardware or at least comprehending guide on how to make it work properly be present.
The game nowadays suffers from numerous bugs and glitches (i.e. aqua level 1-2, shop level 1-1 are not solvable due to physics engine not working properly)
For some DLCs you need to delete others to even start it (otherwise crash), i.e. back to the shop works only if anniversary DLC is uninstalled etc.
As a completionist, I refuse to play the game knowing that few levels are broken and no matter what I will never finish those.
Its a pity cause even the old CM1 works fine on current-gen computers and all puzzles are solvable there.

So far I cannot recommend the game due to above issues. I highly doubt it, but should there be and update for this software that will fix the issues and glitches, I would change the review to positive for sure.

Steam Deck Experience: Excellent (shockingly)

This just shows how incredible Proton is. This ancient game that only came out for Windows and uses NVIDIA PhysX software can run on Linux. In fact it runs better. I had a laptop that this game wasn't playable in Windows. For fun I tried it using Proton on Linux and the game was completely playable at full framerate.

Note for Linux users: As far as I can tell this game is fully functional on Linux using the default, Steam provided, compatibility tools.

General Note: You may need to downgrade your PhysX drivers for some of the levels to work. Uninstall your current driver and install the one that is in the Crazy Machines 2 folder.

I've played this game since I was like five or six. I loved it so much that when I saw it on Steam I had to buy it and relive my childhood. It's such a good Rube Goldberg puzzle game. The elements can be wacky and the overall experience is great. I would recommend it to anyone who likes Rube Goldberg machines and tricky puzzles.

Psst. Want some cheat codes? Type these anywhere ingame.
ilovedisco - turns the main menu into a disco
frogs - unlimited hints and solutions
moreelements - allows you to place as many elements as you want when in the level editor
gimmeall - unlocks all elements in the level editor

These next few only work when in the career chapter menus
nokarma1 gives all bronze medals for selected chapter
nokarma2 gives all silver medals for selected chapter
nokarma3 gives all gold medals for selected chapter

The game's broken on modern machines - the physics engine doesn't behave correctly, such that some puzzles are now impossible to solve.

Got this game looking for a dazzling recreation of "The Incredible Machine", but something isn't right here. Play is dry and sterile.

Negative review which is not related to the actual design of the game...or wait, maybe it is.

The developers decided to make this "PhysX" based. Unfortunately that means that if you're (most likely) not using the supplied PhysX version some levels are simply uncompletable. Of course you could be rolling back to the "correct" version of PhysX, but whoever designs a game to only run correctly on ONE version of a graphics driver that is being CONSTANTLY updated has a severe lack of foresight. I just completed the last CM 1 missions and the game to this day and age still works flawlessly. Why fuck with that formula and introduce randomly behaving elements that can break the game? Very nice.

So far it's only levels 1-4 (spoke doesn't move) and 1-7 (barrels do not behave the way they are supposed to), but I wonder how many more levels are broken and of course never fixed. The devs have even acknowledged these issues, but they didn't seem to be interested in fixing them. Old game and all. Even in levels that can be completed the physics are somewhat questionable (if a ball hits a spring it should be catapulted back based on its weight and the speed with which it hit the spring...this is clearly not the case...at all, it's just random). That's why it gets an automatic "not recommended". Apart from that the game launches at least.

To give you an example of 1-7: There are 3 barrels that need to be delivered into the end zone in a particular order. However, the barrels don't move the way they should at the start (where you can't even influence them). I was able to get all barrels into the end zone, but the order is impossible to achieve, which results in mission failure. I tried it with a guide, I watched YouTube videos. The barrels just behave differently. I even tried the integrated solution system in the game, which auto solves a level. Well, that one can't even get all barrels to the end zone. They get stuck well before. So, it's clearly a PhysX issue. I refuse to go through the hassle of uninstalling PhysX and reinstalling the old version. Since it is not possible to have 2 versions installed and all other games might break if I do that and because it's generally a lot of hassle...

So, I'll just finish what's possible. At least there are cheats out there to unlock all levels.

Bunch of physics related bugs making it impossible to complete some optional objectives (Level 1-4's wagon wheel gets stuck) and some main objectives (level 1-7). Didn't bother playing past that point.

This game dissapoints me. It runs fun on my computer and I have no trouble getting it running on any of my laptops but as an incredible machine style game it fails on several levels.
The first is the Part variety, now there is a wide range of interesting parts and even some that use Nvidia physx, I particularly like the water physics, HOWEVER there is a distinct lack of things like walls, floors and slopes in player made puzzles. Yeah you see all those curved walls everywhere in the screenshots? To the best of my knowledge you either have to unlock those or cannot use those at all in your own puzzles. Also the only walls you can make can be broken and both the shelves and walls have very limited size.
This leaves me feeling creatively stunted as it looks like I more or less have to use everything they give me in very specific ways rather than letting me expeiriment with using things in ways other than its primary use.

The other thing that dissapoints me about this game is that they slapped a completely arbitrary limit on how many of every item you can use in free build mode, granted its 20 per item but its still dissapointing to see item limits applied to specific items rather than across the entire contraption as a whole.

I did not have trouble getting the game to run, it started up completely fine for me but I've heard that some people have issues with getting the game to run and I cannot comment on that because I don't have that issue.

Now when I saw this game back whenever I bought it several years ago I had three things on my mind that sold me on it "its the incredible machine, it has physx, and its in 3d." Having spent a LONG time as a kid throwing together rube goldberg contraptions in the incredible machine this sounded like a dream come true for me. And then the let downs started rolling in:
First: you don't have all the parts unlocked at the start, you have to go through the campaign to unlock them, this is bad because you don't have all the tools nessasary to start building puzzles on your own.
Second: the way the basic walls and floors are discourages building more interesting puzzles because you cannot effectively seperate things out to force the player to think the way you want them to
Third: the campaign puzzles seem arbitrary and lack a lot of the life puzzles in the incredible machine had, the decoration elements are very much lacking compared to what you could do in the incredible machine(meaning I hope you like the brick background because you'll be seeing it a LOT)
Fourth: Physx is cool but I get the impression that even with the fluids dlc(which came out some years after the game itself) that it isn't being used effectively, it seems to work fine for solid body physics but considering the trouble it causes for people to install the game I would have liked to have more things be destructable(like some of the floor blocks in the incredible machine)

All in all I'm dissapointed in Crazy Machines 2 as a follow up to the incredible machine because I think moving to 3d put a lot of the basic mechanics a step back even while it added more advanced mechanics. I don't feel like these new mechanics have as much potential for interesting puzzles or are as open ended or well thought out as some of the things in the original Incredible Machine game.

EDIT: The game is too glitched for it's own good, what was I thinking giving it positive review? Right, bias. Anyway, negative now.

Crazy Machines 2 is a sequel to Crazy Machine, not counting Crazy Machines 1.5, released in 2008. It's a game of genre of Incredible Machines, where you build a machines out of many details that will accomplish the goals in one way or another. Or more exactly, you feel the needed spaces with limited amount of elements to find one of few correct solution. More of classic puzzle than anything sandboxy you see lately.
Game even supported PhysX new-by-then hardware.

And now, about how it runs nowadays on Steam.
It runs badly!
First, many people have trouble at making this game start at all. I didn't had problem with launching it. You should check demo version first somewhere to see if game will run for sure or not. If you will have trouble then try to find and (re)install OpenAL.
Then I personally had physics not work in this game. Managed to fix it by reinstalling PsyhX and then rebooting computer. Though I have feeling that rebooting was enough, after all game itself should install PsyhX drivers. Anyway. Try to reboot computer first after installing game.

Get demo off Internet and try it first!

Once you are past launch troubles (which you may not have), you still have the amazingly screwed physics in game itself, which is quite a really bad thing for physics-based puzzle.
The thing is that physics are not reliable. Tweaking some elements may change the resulting behavior of other elements that aren't connected to the one being tweaked in any way. You may be changing gears around in one part of map and it will somehow make baseball miss the bucked while rolling off slope somewhere else, for example. It's quite frustrating when you got solution right, yet it may not work until you play around with objects.
That, and the way that physics work in game seemed to slightly change from when it originally came out. What it means is that some solution don't work anymore. Now, it doesn't affect Crazy Machines 2 much, I enjoyed beating it fully. but there is a single puzzle in Bonus Labs, puzzle number 18, where official full (with bonus objectives) solution doesn't work. You can however get to see the full solution that community figured out in a list of high score records, by watching replay, once you rush through puzzle without completing bonus objectives.
DLCes seem to have more of broken puzzles, so watch out for those.

Puzzle instructions, which funny professor with overgrown moustaches narrates (instead of being annoying by popping in randomly for some always-repeated comment like in the original CM), also have small problems. The on-screen drawings that point out objectives appear much slower than voice reads the text. Even more, I noticed that some of the later puzzles have intros where voice narrations and text have little differences. And there was even a puzzle where text and voice instructions put "in what order it should be done" incorrectly, different from on-screen drawings!

As you can see, Crazy Machines 2 is full of technical flaws. Which is quite a shame, because it's superb sequel to Crazy Machines.

It has a much more "high-budget" feel to it than previous title, sporting modern-by-then shiny graphics, support of more complex physics (Like, ropes can be hanged without being connected to anything, useful for just pushing objects.), even 15 themes, with their own decoration and music. Soundtrack is a bit too much of "stereotypical local", but got nice pieces, like Caribbean theme that sounds slightly like something from Monkey Island . On bad side it's hard to understand whole puzzle system from the first look, new graphics/style are quite messy, also having useless decorations mixed in.

It also introduced new complex systems of gears and laser, making them often main focus of puzzle. There are also robots made of 3 parts and switches on which you can place switch of any given type, like button or timer clock. Instead of puzzles being one-trick physics stuff, you often will have to manipulate whole system of gears, lasers, electricity, switches. Which isn't such bad thing, especially knowing that physics are buggy here.

And every puzzle in this sequel concentrates on mostly figuring out where in the system to place each elements. There are almost no puzzles where the only thing you have to do is pixel-perfect placing of elements, unlike original Crazy Machines. I mean, not when you figure out how it should work, but when you are busy tweaking placement, being frustrated with it. I like Crazy Machines 2 approach so much more!
Not to mentioning that it saves some work when it comes to precise placement after all by having a minimal step which elements can be moved by, so to say.

Game also gives you mandatory and bonus objectives, while also providing with text clues and other hints, giving it less frustrating moments. Unlike Crazy Machines, where you either figure out solution to some-super-tricky puzzles or don't progress at all.

Overall, you will get 150 main puzzles to solve, with last 40 of which being hidden until you beat all previous ones properly. There is also 10 tutorial puzzles that you should do. 20 more Bonus puzzles. And 20 more bonus puzzles that were made exclusively for PhysX hardware. No, you can't access those. So no idea what to expect in them.

You also can design your own puzzles for your own amusement or to send it to others. Yes, you can download and upload your labs in the game to the server. And editor lets you do quite a lot of things too. Though, for some reason it has some elements locked. The requirements for those is to get some awards in main campaign, by, for example, using fireworks few times. Bad thing is that it doesn't tell you what exactly you are supposed to do to unlock them, from what I know. In all honesty, I didn't try making my own labs or try using others, so I can be wrong.

Overall, I can recommend this to only those who are ready to handle technical difficulties and those who loved Incredibly Machines games. It's good sequel and I can overlook all trouble I sometimes had for all fun I had with puzzles that didn't feel unfair.
Everybody who doesn't want to bother, well, eh, should avoid this one.

Perhaps I should give this game thumbs down, but at core it's real good. I had fun.

Now, I also should mention that Back to Shop DLC, that has glitchy store page so you can't review it, is way too bugged. While it's good, few puzzles don't work properly anymore, official solutions will not do. So watch out, if you are planning to get it, then you will have to live with few unbeatable puzzles and not being able to access last 10 puzzles.

crazy machines2 is a fun level building game. It has more elements and levels than any other crazy machines game. The only thing it doesn't have like is the ability to set wood on fire like crazy machines elements. it is a bit complicated so I would suggest that you play the first 10 levels. This game like many of the other crazy machines games has an in-game editor. like crazy machines elements you have to earn the parts to use in the editor. If you want to have the parts unlocked forever once you start to type in "gimmeall. once you type that in you should see cheat all part available. To have unlimited uses of parts in the editor type in moreelements with no spaces but you will have to type in this code every time you log in to crazy machines 2. All in all, this is a fun challenging game.

Ignore all the stupid people, searched a little bit, made sure PhysX version is correct, OpenAL is installed, works perfectly fine on Win 7 x64. If you want to try the game first to make sure it runs, download the demo!

(seriously, so much stupidity in the reviews)

I had a game way back years ago on my Windows 95 comp, it was called "The incredible Machine" (when it was running the game the computer just called it "TIM") it was made by a company called Sierra. Crazy Machines has alot of the same mechanics as TIM, which is why I bought it. Crazy Machines is very lively and full of intrigue to me, I can't help but notice that it is a very precocious game, like it is ahead of its time, but still right where it should be. All-n-all it's very fun to play, I must say.

I actually enjoy this game, like all the other crazy machines. Very good puzzle games and some are really really hard. Worth every penny, brought the complete packs, so I own them all. I actually think it is the best puzzle game I've ever played. Worth it!