I’ve known about this game for a while, but I only just now got around to playing it.

Physics-puzzle game. Time is stopped while you take objects in reserve and place them in the level, and you click the icon in the upper-right to start time and see if your setup accomplishes the stated goal. Left clicking at any point during the sequence returns every object to their starting positions and goes back to object-placing mode. You can only see five object-types in reserve at a time and have to click the arrows above them to switch between sets of 5, but they automatically shift together as you take them out so you won’t have to keep flipping through if there are 5 or fewer types of objects in reserve. As is well known about physics-puzzles by now, much of the challenge isn’t so much figuring out what to do as it is getting the physics to work properly, just constantly going back to tweak things slightly until it does what it’s supposed to do. Crazy to think how this issue is older than I am, yet physics-puzzles are still dealing with it to this day. There’s also a score system, but your bonus points only tick down while you’re in object-placing mode, i.e. while you’re solving the puzzle, which is dumb not just because timing how long it takes to solve a puzzle is antithetical to the foundational idea of puzzles, but also because it’s easy to cheese (run the puzzle early and then start thinking about what to do, or solve the puzzle ahead of time before reentering your password and regurgitating the solution). The score should’ve been based on how long the puzzle solution takes, or how few parts you use.

First thing you’ll notice is that the game is blatantly running on DOSBox 0.74. You’d think with it being a custom build modified into a launcher for one specific game, the game would at least run without issue, but there are so many instances of severe slowdown in this game (and I’m convinced the slowdown is specifically DOSBox’s fault because the latest stable build STILL lags while running Impulse Tracker). For real, how hard would it be to increase the emulator’s emulated CPU or RAM or whatever the artificial bottleneck is? There’s even a glitch that sometimes happens when entering fullscreen during a puzzle’s preview screen: when you try to click on the play-area’s window to play the level, the game keeps automatically going back to preview mode (to fix the bug, just exit fullscreen). Also, as you may have noticed, there’s a version with CD-quality audio, but the version from Humble Trove (which looks to be the same version on GOG) only has the Genesis/Mega Drive-esque music (is it too much to ask to be able to switch between them?). Just to drive home how slap-dash this…“port” is, according to this article, there’s another version of the game on 3DO that has all the same levels as this, plus extra exclusive levels. They could’ve used the then-open-source FreeDO emulator, added mouse support for the cursor, upped the resolution (so puzzles would all fit on screen), and fixed the slow-down. Then, they’d actually have a reason to sell their emulator frontend because it’d be the definitive version of the game. Hell, they could’ve just recreated those extra levels and injected them into the DOS version! The game literally already has a built-in editor for making custom levels, for crying out loud! Instead, the only change they made was defeating the copy-protection so you don’t have to check the manual each time you run the game, and I admit, that’s a positive change.

Oh, but you’re still gonna need that manual. Despite the massive number of “tutorial” levels, the level design doesn’t show you how most things work ahead of time, nor do the levels’ descriptions tell you much of how things work, either. As early as the very first level, there are bowling balls on unmoving conveyor belts, and you have to figure out how mouse cages will get those conveyor belts to move (fun fact: in the 3DO version, this particular level is the second one; they added a level beforehand that better introduces what you have to do). A few levels later, you’re told that gears can pop balloons, but there are several levels where you need to pop balloons without any gears available; the only way to know what else pops them besides trial-and-error is to check the manual. Luckily, the manual is included as a PDF, but it shows up crowded among the rest of the game’s files after installation, so I didn’t notice it until it was too late.

Even with the manual, there are a bunch of idiosyncrasies that never get explained to you. For example, you’re told that attaching rope to a gun, then attaching the other end of the rope to something that moves (like a seesaw) will fire the gun when the moving object pulls on the rope. Same for light bulbs: attach and pull the rope to turn the light on. This happens…sometimes. Other times, connecting the seesaw to the gun or bulb via rope turns the seesaw into an immovable object, causing other objects to bounce off of it. Once again, it’s back to trail-and-error to figure out what’s wrong. It’s not weight, because light objects have made the seesaws pull ropes before, and the heavy bowling ball is what’s bouncing off right now. It’s not rope length; longer ropes have been pulled just fine before. It’s not falling speed, as shorter drops have also pulled ropes before. What actually causes the problem–which, again, is never mentioned either in-game or the manual–is the angle of the rope: the gun’s trigger has to be pulled backwards, and the bulb’s string has to be pulled down. To add insult to injury, this mechanic is never made use of in the entire game; in fact, it’s worked around by having pulleys, an object with no collision or purpose besides redirecting a rope’s path (and blocking placement of other objects on top of it).

Stuff like that comes up throughout the whole game, but the worst offender is level 71. See, one of the things you have to do is activate a bellows, and the only object either in-play or in reserve that can reach it is a balloon. Problem is, the bellows is just barely sticking out from behind a ceiling, and if the balloon hits that part, it just bounces off without activating the bellows. I was stuck here for a while before finally breaking down and looking up a walkthrough for this game for the first time. Turns out, you need to hit the bellows with a seesaw to activate it. There’s still a problem, though: despite the seesaw being little more than a thin diagonal line, it still has box-based collision, and you can’t have the seesaw “overlap” the bellows, even if it’s just the transparent part. So, how are you supposed to get the seesaw to hit the bellows if you can’t put the bellows in the seesaw’s path? Get this: you have to place the seesaw directly below the bellows, so when it tilts up and doesn’t hit the bellows, it hits the bellows. I’m not even joking; you can clearly see the gaps in their sprites before the bellows activates:

In-freaking-credible. There isn’t even so much as a brief extra frame to show the seesaw going further up to visualize the existence of this mechanic; that’s as far up as the seesaw goes.

Oh, and the physics are bad even by physics-puzzle standards. Level 149 seems really simple at first glance: put the trampolines at the edges and use the seesaws to cover the rest of the gaps so the two guys can get to the top. Problem is, there’s a glitch where instead of the ceiling slope knocking the guy to the right, it knocks the guy down and right, trapping him in an endless loop, eventually getting him stuck in a gap that definitely did not need to be there:

As you can see, it’s completely arbitrary as well. One guy made it through just fine, but the other guy got stuck, even though nothing about the setup alludes to any potential differences. There isn’t even anywhere else the trampoline could go; up, and it conflicts with the steep slope or is too high; right, and it conflicts with the gentle slope; down, and it conflicts with the guy’s starting position; all of which place a giant red X on the trampoline indicating it can’t go there. After much trial-and-error with repositioning the first seesaw (the only one that actually moves), I managed to get both guys stuck in that gap. What finally got both of them through was repositioning the second seesaw so they don’t fall directly on the slope. How did that work? No idea.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, many levels can easily and obviously be sequence-broken and completed much faster than intended. At least, I assume so; the manual does mention “decoy parts,” but there are levels (even in late-game) that have a ton of pre-set objects where all you have to do is place a rocket above a trampoline or a flashlight, and the level is over in three seconds. It’s as if the game-engine developer and level designer had no communication with each other; it’s the only explanation I can think of for such a spastic difficulty curve.

Despite all these problems, I can’t help but think the game still has potential for really good puzzles. There were a few that managed to be tricky without requiring anything new: 30, 55, and 156 (and maybe 109, but I did look up a walkthrough for that one to discover that certain objects CAN be placed overlapping the seesaw, but only if the seesaw is facing a certain way. UGH). It’s just that none of the other 160 levels ever came close to realizing that potential.

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this game. The vast majority of the levels are either really easy or require some ambiguous mechanic that’s never shown or explained (and in some cases, never used again). Even if you’re still interested, just emulate it; that’s what they did. You can even pick a different DOS emulator if you want, one that’s actually had a major update in the last 12 years (though FYI, I can’t seem to get Impulse Tracker running on them except the DOSBox forks, and those ones STILL LAG).