This is a review that I have been meaning to get to for quite some time yet has been put off for absolutely forever. There was a fairly brief period where I had patrons get to choose reviews for me as a reward on Patreon. There were only three games that were chosen. One of them was of Worms Reloaded, a game I reviewed a while back that no one else seemed to really care about. That game was something I would not normally be interested in but I reviewed it because my then patron John Dolan gifted me a copy on Steam. He also did the same with Contraption Maker.

Yeah, this was why I stopped having review requests as rewards. It just kept getting put off because I normally play these games based on my own level of interest. Contraption Maker just isn’t really the type of game that interests me in concept, and now that I’ve played it, I wouldn’t say it interests me gameplay wise either.

I’m unsure if I can say Contraption Maker is bad, and I will disclose that puzzle games aren’t my favorite genre, but this game just really isn’t for me. From what I can gather, Contraption Maker is meant to run on user created content similarly to that of something like Little Big Planet or Super Mario Maker, only with puzzles instead of platformer levels. Unfortunately I was so bored with the base game that I was not interested in checking out the user created ones.

The only levels I have completed in Contraption Maker are the tutorial levels, and it took me 2 hours to complete them all. The good news is that I can finally say I’m a full blown game journalist now because some of these tutorial levels made me want to quit. You are basically given 54 puzzles in a row, each with a new item with different mechanics. It does not so much as teach you how to use these items more so than it dumps you into a puzzle with the item you need to use.

A lot of these are fairly simple like tutorials should be but some were just downright confusing and difficult to wrap my head around. Thankfully the puzzles are not overly complex and I was usually able to figure these out on my own, but this shouldn’t be the case with ANY tutorial. Normally a game would gradually sprinkle all these different mechanics in as you go along, but Contraption Maker doesn’t exactly have a story mode of sorts to do that with.

I am sure that I can figure out how the actual puzzles can work given enough time, but this game doesn’t make me want to. I don’t think it is a bad game though, as I consider it more of a “you get out of it what you put into it” kind of deal. I will also give credit that the music was pretty catchy and the animation was serviceable. It’s really just not my cup of tea so what I say here is kind of limited.

Really the tutorial is what kills it for me. First impressions are important, and I just would not recommend the game based upon what I have played nor do I have any interest in going any further. I can’t say I had much fun with these puzzles nor did I feel much satisfaction when I completed them.

Anyway yeah, this is why I’m not doing reviews as rewards anymore. I just don’t feel I’m qualified to say anymore about this title than I already have. There is one request left from that time from a different patron, but it’s for something I would have likely covered anyway. So see you when I decide to finally give Cosmic Star Heroine a go.

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