?
It is Zack's first day at the GadgetCo factory. Of course, the other
workers decide to put the new guy through his paces. They borrow
and mislay all his tools. Now he has to repair a plant with serious
malfunctions, but first he has to find his tools.
The game itself consists in Zack going through puzzle after puzzle, regaining his tools one by one. He will need them to solve the later, tougher puzzles. Each puzzle consists of one or more single-screen rooms in isometric view. No scrolling here.
Contraption Zack might have been a great game. Part of its development team had worked on The Incredible Machine. The technical finish shows a love for details, from the cartoony intro over the in-game menu to the fact that it supports multiple sound devices, you can, for example, choose Roland for music and Soundblaster for sound effects. Unfortunately, the game tries to make use of resources it does not have.
The isometric view makes moving around difficult without a mouse, which is not supported on either platform. Using a gamepad instead of the numeric keyboard is an improvement, but not by much. It is very annoying when Zack bounces against the frame of a door that opens only for a short time. The menu isn't really made for VGA, the font is so small that it is hardly legible. An even bigger problem is the puzzle design itself. It is very, very easy to lock yourself into some corner with no way out, but you cannot simply restart the puzzle itself, you have to start over the whole level.
So, attractive as the basic idea is: give me Chip's Challenge any day.
Links
- Two thumbs up, Home of the Underdogs concludes:
Before Twinsen's Odyssey and long before Alone in the Dark, Contraption Zack is among the first games that successfully combined physical puzzles, action, and adventure elements into a fine game. Your job is to help Zack the clueless mechanic pass various levels by using his tools to fix things and pass nasty traps. The game is somewhat reminiscent of Epyx classic Chip's Challenge, but played in a more attractive isometric board, with more parts and items to manipulate. Definitely one of the most original puzzle/adventure games to come along in a long time.
- This game may be more work than play, GameBringer warns:
Now for the monkey wrench to clog up the works, if I may mix metaphors, is that Contraption Zack just wasn't exciting. It was interesting—not too simple and not too hard, but there was no "oomph!" to it, in my opinion.
- MobyGames
