Fantastic Contraption

Fantastic Contraption is interesting but isn't a "fun" game. If it came with your Vive, great, knock yourself out. The pure experience of playing in virtual reality should be enough to keep you engaged for hours, even if you aren't really having "fun". Otherwise, the asking price is outrageous and you should wait until it's on a deep sale. Where the game falters is in the extremely limited pool of parts to build from. There are basically only two parts, wheels and beams. There are technically two types of beams, but the distinction rarely matters. Using these tools, you complete simple puzzles by building simple machines. You cannot control your vehicle in any way, so getting it to do what you want involves either making a vehicle that moves straight and pointing it in the right direction, or designing it so that it moves in a curve - and pointing it in the right direction. You're so limited it's hard to be clever, and [b]most puzzles come down to trial and error of adjusting the lengths of the beams until the vehicle moves just right.[/b] In some cases it's easier not to make a contraption at all. I beat one level, where I needed to put a pink ball inside a pink cube that was far away, by attaching the ball to the end of a very long pole, swinging the pole around so that the ball was already inside the cube, and starting the level. The game pretends like you can only build within a limited area, but in reality you can make your parts as big as you want, and there's nothing to stop you from making a pole that stretches across the entire level. The gameplay is very similar to Besiege, but with most of the features removed (though Besiege may have copied its gameplay from the original Fantastic Contraption 2D game). If you've played Besiege, you will find the gameplay of Fantastic Contraption much less intriguing. You may have loved the original 2D Fantastic Contraption, but the gameplay simply does not translate well to 3D. FC has the worst menu ever designed by anyone. The person who designed the menu is a psycopath. You access the menu by putting on a helmet in the game, instead of pressing the menu button on the Vive controller like a sane developer would expect you to do. The menu itself is a cluster of complex 3D objects all jammed tightly together, so that if you don't have a large play area you will literally be stuck inside the objects that make up the menu and unable to see them clearly. The menu uses strange physics-based design - for example, to save a contraption, you pick up a tiny copy of it off of a table and drop it onto a spinning plate. The fact that the plate spins freely makes this difficult, and if you drop the piece it can bounce out of reach and now you aren't allowed to save your contraption. I think you are also supposed to be able to change levels from this menu, but I have no idea how. I can grab levels from another spinning plate and throw them at the walls, but I don't see a way to activate one. The menu is incredibly stupid, and the devs need to accept that it was a bad decision and abandon it instead of sticking with it just because they put time into it. Despite the gameplay not being very good, the game is definitely engaging just because the experience of building a contraption by hand in VR is so new. The construction gameplay is very satisfying - it's easy to maneuver pieces exactly the way you want and the fact that you can be doing a separate thing with each hand is awesome. I get the impression that the developers got so caught up in the building mechanics that they forgot to come up with a fun gameplay concept. If you got FC for free it will probably tide you over until you buy something enjoyable, but I definitely wouldn't recommend spending money on it. This game isn't even remotely worth $40. This is a $5 experience.

'Fantastic Contraption' is a great puzzle game that is seriously hampered in later levels by many physics, UI, design, and quality issues. These issues are relatively minor, but ultimately extremely frustrating because of how many other things this game does so well. It feels GREAT to just start grabbing pieces and building a contraption. The actual physical movements are intuitive, for the most part. When everything works together, you can enact your idea in no time flat. When your idea works, you're on cloud nine -- the physical nature of the building helps lend a feeling of true ownership and accomplishment when your contraption solves the puzzle at hand. However, there are several issues that can dissolve the bond between idea and action. These issues are relatively minor, but as the puzzles get more complex, the uncertainty and instability caused by these issues turn a fun and engaging puzzle game into an exercise of sheer frustration. As of this current version, here are my collection of issues that I have noted... [h1]Section 1: Lack of tutorialization or documentation[/h1] The only tutorials offered by the game are on basic control and interaction matters -- what the buttons on the controllers do, what the general goal of the puzzles are, what the various objects in the creation space are for, etc. Once the game has filled you in on those ideas, it utterly abandons you. There is no way to recall those prior pieces of information in-game. Additionally, even the meager tutorials and help text are incomplete. Here are some super useful basic points the game never tells you: [olist] [*]The difference between the 'wooden' and 'water' rods. Wooden rods collide with objects and building pieces, water rods do not. You have to read the FAQ on the game's website to find this out. [*]There is a sort of black-goo sphere on the underside of the cat. It will 'glue' joints together, and will slow down the wheels/motors. Again, this info is on the game's website -- not in-game [*]You can grab the building materials from around yourself instead of from the cat! Wood rods are behind your right shoulder, water rods behind the left shoulder. The sticky goo is 'in' your right ear. Wheels/motors are in your left ear (but for me, those don't work -- they don't rotate). These 'shortcuts' are AMAZINGLY useful if you know them. They are only documented in a talk given at a VR developers conference. Seriously. I found them because I watched a talk by the creator. [/olist] [h1]Section 2: Insufficient editing tools[/h1] The only 'tools' (or actions) available in-game are attaching objects to joints, detaching objects from joints, lengthening rods, moving individual objects, moving an entire contraption around, deleting' objects, and clearing the entire construction workspace. The two obvious additional actions sorely missing are undo/redo functionality, and part-duplication. If for some reason, through your fault or not, your contraption becomes broken because of a bad edit -- you cannot roll back. All you can do is attempt to manually fix the issue. If the only causes of breaking contraptions were user error, this would be a minor point -- but those are not the only causes, something which I will return to at a later point. Many times in the construction of your contraption, you will realize that you will have duplicate sub-sections in your design. Perhaps you want to build two side-pods on your block-pusher contraption, one on each side. There is no way to 'duplicate' a contraption (or a sub section). You just have to build it twice. Do you want to have 8 identical sub-modules? Have fun building that sub-module 8 times. I hope you don't mess one of them up. At later levels in the game, it becomes clear a more advanced editing tool would be of use -- a 'grid' with a 'snap to grid' function. As a simple example, if you have 8 wheels that all need to be lined up on the same plane, and facing the same direction, you are now engaged in incessant fiddling. Without a snap-to-grid function, you are manually fiddling with every piece and connector to make sure they line up as needed. And although the precision of the VIve controllers are amazing, this quickly becomes a Sisyphean ordeal. [h1]Section 3: Editing/Physics Issues[/h1] As a starter, the process of attempting to remove a part connected to multiple joints is fiddly and imperfect. What you need to do is first grab the part to be disconnected, then with the other hand, grab a part similarly attached at the same joint. If you're lucky, the joint of the part you want disconnected simply disconnects. If you're unlucky, you've disconnected your part -- but you've also moved the original joint around in the process. You intended to just disconnect a joint, but have now possibly broken your contraption. This assumes that you grabbed the right part at all, which is hit-or-miss with dense contraptions. You likely just disconnected or moved an completely unrelated part by accident. The game, while in the editing mode, will completely mangle your contraption if you are not careful. I've still not fully worked out the conditions, but I believe it occurs when you move your contraption (or sections of it) within solid environmental blocks -- like the ground. What appears to happen, is that the game tries to move the parts away from the center of the solid object until they are no longer colliding with that object. Note I said parts, and not 'the entire contraption'. So, if you are working on editing a large/complex contraption, and you make the mistake of putting part of it through the floor -- the section of your contraption that intersected the floor has now been 'crunched'. This is absolutely unacceptable. With a large/complex contraption, you may be moving and rotating it around a good amount, in order to work on different parts of it. You may not even have noticed you put part of your contraption within a solid environmental space while moving it around. You'll just notice at some point that your contraption has been broken, and now you have to manually fix the contraption -- if it's even worth it. Sometimes it's not, and you're better off just rebuilding it. The worst part is, all these issues so far interact with each other to harm the experience. You want to make a 8-wheels-in-series vehicle to 'crawl' forward over some obstacles? Good luck getting all 8 of those wheels to all touch the ground at once. Good luck getting them to all point in the same direction -- because you cannot. One of your wheels is slightly off-center -- now your contraption meanders to the right when moving forward. Oh, when building your vehicle, you rotated the whole vehicle, and 3 of the wheels intersected into the ground. Now those 3 wheels have crunched into each other. But you cannot just 'undo' -- you have to manually fix them. Now they'll never be in line again. You're better off just starting over. [h1]Section 4: Puzzle Issues[/h1] I've had several instances where I had a contraption solve the puzzle, but the game did not recognize it. When I compared my methods to those used successfully by other players, it was clear my solution was valid -- but the game simply would not credit me with solving it. My other puzzle issue is that the game allows you to move your contraption outside the 'construction' space before starting the contraption. This allows you to trivialize several puzzles. Why build a contraption to exit the space forward, retrieve the object, reverse course, and place the object in the goal? You can simply just 'lasso' the object outside the construction space with a really long rod with a loop at the end, and have the contraption drive towards the goal instead. [h1]Summary[/h1] The very fact I've written this detailed description of issues speaks to the fact the game is fun and engaging -- when it works. When it doesn't, it's a nightmare.

I was pretty excited about this game… and, if you got this game came in the Vive bundle, then it's pretty cool to have just for the experience of building things in Virtual Reality. But I have to say that the purchase price for the game is way out of proportion for what you actually get. I was hoping for a VR version of Besieged (which is incredibly entertaining); but Fantastic Contraptions feels like a very watered down version that does not allow you to build anything really creatively useful to fulfilling the in-game goals. That saps all the fun right out of it. The Virtual Reality part is done very well. It feels flawless and intuitive to move around in the environment, grab things, and put them together using both hands. But the gameplay does not feel complete. It seems as though Fantastic Contraption has the basics down (beams, wheels, building with two hands, VR environment) but is missing elements of gameplay to allow you to focus more on creativity rather than simply fiddling with basics to make the contraptions work properly. A good example of this is that there is no way, as far as I can tell, to snap your wheels to be properly straight and aligned with one another. Because it's pretty much impossible for you to lay the wheels down perfectly straight by hand, your contraptions are often going to slowly turn one direction or another. You have to keep restarting the level and slightly twisting a wheel one direction or another until it works right. I'd rather spend my time trying to figure out a creative way to make my contraptions do the intended job than to mess around trying to get the basics to work (i.e. making the contraption drive straight). To use Besieged as an example again, in Besieged there are so many fundamentally different ways to achieve the end goal that if you and a friend play it at the same time, it’s unlikely that your vehicles will look anything alike. But in Fantastic Contraption, there are so few parts and/or mechanics to draw upon that you only feel like there is one way to reach the in-game goal. The VR is done really well in this game, and the basics feel well put together, clean and intuitive. It just does not feel like a full and complete game yet, and the current experience is not worth the asking price.

[b][i]Fantastic Conraption[/i] is an excellent VR game to satisfy your inner engineer.[/b] If you don't like to solve mechanical puzzles, I'd stay away, but if you do - this is near perfect. This title manages to have a shallow learning curve by not having too many variables. The end goal of each puzzle is simple - get the ballon-like object to the goal. The tools you have at your disposal are also fairly limited and simple - which is great. There are multiple ways to solve each puzzle, which is the cornerstone of any great puzzler. [b]Pros:[/b] +I don't know of any other engineer/puzzling game for VR right now - and this one does it well +Great bubbly atmosphere +Not overly complicated in terms of learning curve [b]Cons:[/b] -Other than it is strictly for those that enjoy 'mechanical puzzles', I cannot really think of any 'cons' [b]If this looks like your kinda thang, I am certain that it is.[/b]

Totally addictive. I have just completed every level, it took me 21 hours. Caroonish styling is appropriate and it really transports you to a world where green shapes float mid air. They should teach this in schools, we'd have a lot more (and better) engineers. Some levels are quite challenging. But not enough to make you give up. Side note: I like the "magic hat" as a saving/sharing feature.

Fantasitc Contraption ist schon so etwas wie ein alter Klassiker der VR-Spiele. Es ist das einzige VR-Spiel von Naorthway Games 2016 und mit der original Vive veröffentlicht worden. Damals war es eines der Vorzeigespiele für Immersion und physikalische Interaktivität in VR. Fantastic Contraption ist, wie viele wahrscheinlich wissen ein etwas seltsames Konstruktionsrätselspiel. In Fantastic Contraption ist es unsere Hauptaufgabe ein rosa leuchtendes Kugelwesen an sein vorgegebenes Ziel zu bringen. Hört sich einfach an.Um den kleinen Ball aber ans Ziel zu bringen, müssen wir waghalsige Vehikel und sonstige Konstruktionen auf Rädern errichten. Gebaut wird natürlich mit den eigenen Händen und wer aufgrund des Alters gedacht hat, man bekommt nur popelige Vive-Controller zu sehen, kann sich beruhigen. Scheinbar gab es nach Erscheinen der Index ein update, das die Index-Controller nicht nur unterstützt, sondern auch eigene Modelle im Spiel zeigt. Sehr cool! Unsere Fahrzeuge bestehen im Grunde nur aus drei verschiedenen Teilen, aus zwei Arten von Sticks und sich ständig bewegenden zylindrischen Rädern. Es mach Spaß die tollkühnen Gefährte zu sehen wie sie unweigerlich auf den Abgrund zusteuern, bis wir endlich genau DIE Änderung vorgenommen haben. Und die Kugel kommt ins Ziel. Befriedigenderes kann es nicht geben. Zum Glück gibt es 50 Level, was mehr ist, als ich wohl je schaffen werde, ohne die Geduld zu verlieren. Für Abwechslung in den Leveln ist durch Katapulte, Drahtseile, Aufzüge und viele schwer zu erreichende Ziele gesorgt. Alles in allem eine große aber lustige physikalische Herausforderungen. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2637225054 Die Welt von Fantastic Contraption ist in der Tat etwas seltsam. Auf den ersten Blick wirkt sie wie eine normale spacige Spieleumgebung mit schwebenden Inseln und blauem Himmel. Wenn wir jedoch genau hinsehen, sehen wir im Hintergrund und am Himmel riesige teil etwas verstörende Figuren. Ich muss zugeben, dass ich etwas verwirrt war. Ansonsten ist die Grafik sehr einfach und nicht unbedingt detailliert, aber sehr liebevoll wenn auch eintönig. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2637226275 Setzen wir übrigens die durchgeknallten In-Game-VR-Helme auf, kommen wir ins Menü, wo wir Level auswählen und Konstruktonen speichern und laden kann. Die VR-Helme sehen übrigens immer anders aus, so haben wir mal einen spacigen oder aber auch mal ein Einhorn als Helm. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2637225424 Ganz verrückt wird es aber, wenn wir Bauen wollen. Unser Baumaterial holen wir uns von der süßen Neko-Katze. (Diese gibt es dann als SteamVR Home Gegenstand!) Durch getriggerte Fürze können wir die Inventar-Katze an die gewünschte Stelle lenken. Das macht das Spiel sehr unterhaltsam. Die Lerkurve ist allerdings relativ steil. Selbst nach dem Tutorial werden wir sicherlich öfter grübelnd dastehn und uns fragen, was zu tun ist. Das wird weniger geduldige Spieler definitiv abschrecken, aber wenn man dranbleibt, wird man mit der der intuitiven Steuerung und dem offenen Spielverlauf Spaß haben. Der einzige Kritikpunkt ist der nach all den Jahren immer noch recht hohe Preis. Da bedanke ich mich auch gleich an den freundlichen Schenker und Leser Worlddestroyer. Danke Sehr! Fans seltsamer Konstruktionsspiele werden hier bestimmt Freude haben! 👀[url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32170554/]Waghalsige Reviews[/url] auf meiner Kurator Seite. 👑 Powered by HoI 4 Deu Curators group in German / English 👑 [list][*] [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/30388691/] Follow Main group [/url][*] [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40282064/] Follow Second group [/url][/list] [u]English:[/u] --------------------------------------> Fantasitc Contraption is already something of an old classic VR game. Is the only VR game from Naorthway Games released in 2016 with the original Vive. At the time it was one of the flagship games for immersion and physical interactivity in VR. Fantastic Contraption, as many probably know, is a somewhat strange construction puzzle game. In Fantastic Contraption, our main task is to get a pink glowing spherical creature to its given destination. To get the little ball to its destination, we have to build daring vehicles and other constructions on wheels. Of course, we build with our own hands, and if you thought that you'd only get to see paltry Vive controllers due to their age, you can rest assured. Apparently, there was an update after the release of the Index, which not only supports the Index controllers, but also shows own models in the game. Very cool! Our vehicles are basically just three different parts, two types of sticks and constantly moving cylindrical wheels. It's fun to see the daredevil vehicles as they inevitably head for the abyss until we finally make just THAT change. And the ball hits the target. There can't be anything more satisfying. Fortunately, there are 50 levels, which is more than I'll probably ever get through without losing patience. Variety in the levels is provided by catapults, wire ropes, elevators, and lots of hard-to-reach targets. All in all, a great but fun physical challenge. The world of Fantastic Contraption is indeed a bit strange. At first glance, it seems like a normal spacey game environment with floating islands and blue skies. However, if we look closely, we see giant partially somewhat disturbing figures in the background and sky. I have to admit that I was a bit confused. Otherwise, the graphics are very simple and not necessarily detailed, but very loving if monotonous. By the way, if we put on the crazy in-game VR helmets, we get to the menu where we can select levels and save and load constructs. The VR helmets always look different, by the way, so we sometimes have a spacey one or a unicorn as a helmet. But it gets really crazy when we want to build. We get our building material from the cute Neko cat. (This is then available as a SteamVR Home item!) By triggered farts we can direct the inventory cat to the desired location. This makes the game very entertaining. The ler curve is relatively steep, though. Even after the tutorial, we'll certainly find ourselves pondering more often, wondering what to do. This will definitely put off less patient players, but if you stick with it, you'll have fun with the intuitive controls and open gameplay. The only criticism is the price, which is still quite high after all these years. That's where I'd like to thank the kind donor and reader Worlddestroyer. Thank you very much! Fans of strange construction games will definitely enjoy here! 👀[url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32170554/]Daredevil Reviews[/url] on my curator page. 👑 Powered by HoI 4 Deu Curators group in German / English 👑 [list][*] [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/30388691/] Follow Main group [/url][*] [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40282064/] Follow Second group [/url][/list]

I'm at a conflict... I can't recommend it for the price. But I got it for free and I do love the game. It feels bare, but the charm comes from the simplicity of it all. And it's easy to look up uploaded solutions and works in progress to draw creativity from others. It really is fun, but I can see how others might get bored if you try to play it for a long period of time. I wish there more options than yes or no, but I'll vote it thumbs up since I really think the game is fun. Get it at a discount though!

Game feels broken. There is no menu's despite the manual saying to put on a hat? There is no hat? Buttons don't do anything except grab and stop/play. . It feels like something is off or not working. I have an oculus rift which is stated as compatible.. but I can't access options, settings, level select so i can skip starting over each time the game starts. A menu did pop up randomly once and it was the most confusing thing. Didn't make any sense., Can't recommend this sadly. Fun creative game from what I played tho.

Overall: great bones, repetitive levels. Maybe buy it on sale. I really wish there was a "recommend, but" or "almost/kind of recommend" option. Much about this game is awesome (one might say fantastic), but the level designs, at least up to level 10b, were kind of repetitive (more on that in a bit). (I played on an oculus rift) The basic premise is that you have to use sticks and wheels to build a widget to get a pink glowy thing into a pink glowy area (maybe more pieces later? I played the first 10 levels so far). Things are attached at joints Pros: - You can configure the building area. Your building area has a floor with adjustable height and a size - you could drag it to fill up your room, or (as I did) make it so that you're essentially building on a desk in front of you). This is awesome and works well. I wish you could adjust this on the fly (zoom in/out/rotate the world to get a different angle sort of thing), but that's not really necessary and it is very well done. - Basic mechanics are great. You can build things, they act as they should, and can do cool things. - The controls are great and mostly intuitive. Sometimes if you have a bunch of things joined together and need to break a specific joint, it can be annoying, but over all they're great. - Visually and audibly (aurally?) pleasant and relaxing and immersive. I mentioned I made the playing field into a desk - I did try to rest my elbow on it once and felt stupid. - No VR pukiness (for me, at least) - I plan on using it as start when I show off my VR headset from now on. I suspect this is because there is no movement in game that is not also movement in real life. I do tend to turn off comfort effects (ie teleporty movement) in VR games, and get used to it after a while, so take this as you will. Cons: The only con so far, though it's kind of a big one, is that (again, at least up to level 10b), the obvious solutions were nearly all the same: build a car. I don't remember the exact order, but my play experience was something like this: goal straight ahead, so build a car. That's fine, intro level, getting you used to how it works. Oh hey, goal straight ahead but in the air - so build a tall car. Goal ahead and to the side, with a wall so you can't drive into but can drive by it: build a car but now hang ball off one side, balanced by weights on the other. That was kind of cool, actually, but then there's the next level: two balls into two goals, both straight ahead: build two cars. Oh hey, something different: build a tower with a spiny thing that'll knock the ball off a pedestal and into the goal. Next level: build the same car with the ball hanging from the side from the first time, but with one tiny modification, It got to the point where for one level the obvious solution was build a medium tall car, but I was tired of if, so I built a short car and a medium tall bridge for it to drive on. But then that was kind of finicky (though it would have worked eventually), so I pushed the bridge aside and made the medium car in hopes that the next level would be interesting. The next level: build a car. That's when I stopped and wrote this review. Occasionally the car would push something over. Once the ball couldn't be attached to any objects, so I built a cage, put the ball in the cage - and attached the cage to a car. But so many of the levels were just build a car. At some point the game gave me a new piece that would stop joints from rotating, which I used a few times. Maybe it gives more pieces later (I really enjoyed the charged particle canon things you could make in the 2d version, dunno if there's charges later on or not. The fact that I built the same car so many times might be slightly less annoying if you could paste in cars you made before, but if you can I don't know how - you can save contraptions by putting on a helmet (think opening a menu) and then dragging them to a shelf. But if you drag from the shelf to a new level, it opens the old level rather than inserting your contraption into the current level. Again, many things about this game are awesome, and I intend to use it as a light intro to VR because of the general pleasantness, lack of pukiness, and interactability. But after building slightly different cars for something like 80% of the first 10+ levels within an hour, I had to turn it off. I'll probably fire it back up in a couple days or a week in the hopes of finding different levels, or maybe I'll just impose a personal no car rule and see how far I can get. There's potential there. Game has great bones. But the levels...

One of the Vive greats. It's great solo and even better with friends taking turns. It's been popular with everyone I've demoed my Vive to, my dad played for well over 2 hours straight on his first time. Fantastic Contraption has that wonderful mix of simplicity and depth that can make it fun to go back to even after so many hours and so many levels completed. Even redoing levels has value because there's so many different ways to achieve the same goals. 17 hours between me and friends before the Vive launched, and many, many more to come!