Despite its unimpressive presentation, the series offers up another great puzzle game for a budget price.
A quick summary of the series is in order if you did not play the first game. The game throws hundreds of simple challenges at you with a task like "turn on this light" or "put this ball in the basket". To accomplish your task, you are given some simple devices or tools such as weights, ropes, fans, robots, batteries, and dozens of other possible trinkets. Stringing together these devices in a sequence and testing your setup is how you complete challenges.
Like any good puzzle game, the strength of Crazy Machines 1.5 is that it gradually introduces concepts to you and layers them into progressively harder challenges. One by one, you get to see physics principles like gravity, friction, momentum, and electricity introduced in straightforward ways. The game also includes some advanced concepts, like using steam to generate electricity. Once you have learned the basics, puzzles start mixing and matching them together. The physics engine is realistic and robust – an eight ball, for example, is far less dense than a ping pong ball, and thus has different uses. It's an excellent formula, and the game is very challenging once you get about halfway through it (Crazy Machines 1.5 is harder than the first game). It is one of those rare games that is challenging for adults, but educational for younger gamers as well.
The simpler puzzles typically only have one solution, but as they get harder and more complicated, the game becomes more open-ended. Many of the game's later challenges look impossible at first and require some experimentation before you figure out what you need to do. A perfect example of this kind of brainbuster is a late puzzle that requires you to build a bridge out of dominoes. Each puzzle limits the items that you can place and where you can place them, but they still leave you a lot of freedom in how you use them. It is a common experience to come up with an ugly, brute force solution to a puzzle, and then look at the recommended solution and find that it is surprisingly elegant.
Crazy Machines 1.5 isn't going to win any awards for it's graphics or audio. It uses flat, 2D graphics that are simple, but adequate. The audio consists of basic but realistic sounds like metal hitting wood, a balloon popping, electricity arcing, and so on. There is a small selection of music that loops endlessly, and a professor character that pops up and provides comments or taunts occasionally. Some of them don't make much sense, which is probably a result of the game having originally been made in German.
With so few quality, creative brain teasing games on the market nowadays, the Crazy Machines series is a refreshing find. Crazy Machines 1.5 is another excellent entry into this criminally underappreciated series at a budget price.