#5: "The Incredible Machine": on silliness, sandboxes, and consequences

Hopefully, every generation has its Minecraft; this was mine. I’m still as amazed at this game as I was back in the 1990s.

Playback problems? Try: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl1LvFDgCio

About the game

Do you remember seeing Rube Goldberg machines in your cartoons when you were growing up? What if there was a way to build your own? “The Incredible Machine” was that game, for me. Released back in 1993, its main part consisted of a set of puzzles, each with a clear (if silly) goal: pop all the balloons. Break the fishbowl. Shoot all the cannons.

The tools and constraints given for each level changed, too. And, this being a Rube Goldberg machine generator, the obvious option was never on that menu. Who cares about walking up to a balloon with a needle, when you can make a cat walk up to a hamster, causing it to panic in its hamster wheel, powering a conveyor belt which propels a bowling ball onto the bellows which blow the ballon onto a pair of scissors?!

The other significant part of “TIM” was the free play mode. This is where the really fun stuff happened. You were given a blank screen, all the toys at once (dynamite. So. Much. Dynamite. 🧨 ) and no rules – even the gravity and air pressure could be tweaked. My brother and I enjoyed this mode a lot. My dad compared it to AutoCAD – a tool he was beginning to use for his job. He hoped it would turn us both into engineers, I think; he was 50% right!

About what it taught me

The first thing I learned when trying to complete all the puzzles was the ability to iterate. Of course, I didn’t call it that at the point. But if a puzzle required me to set up five silly links, and it failed to reach the goal, I learned the ability to isolate the things which didn’t work, and fix them – and to distinguish between this process and the “delete everything and start over” decision, which sometimes was also valuable.

“TIM” was also surprisingly good at teaching us a bit about mechanics and electricity. Sure, the silly stuff about cats, hamsters and dynamite was there. But so were electric engines and generators; sources of light and magnifying glasses to focus that light onto a cannon fuse; varying levels of gravity and air pressure which caused bowling balls to float, balloons to explode, and so on.

Lastly – the creative freedom. This was the 1990s, remember. The other games we played usually led us by the hand from start to finish, with little elbow room for doing things our way. “TIM” literally gave us a blank slate to play with as we pleased. Later, this helped me seek out games which allowed me to explore on my own terms.

Not just me?

It must be pretty hard to get a grant for assembling a multi-step cheese sandwich making machine. Nevertheless, some folks persisted! The resulting paper describes the use of a Rube Goldberg machine in freshman engineering and software degrees: introducing concepts without negatively impacting motivation.

It seems there’s some mileage in the idea. STEM teachers who are encouraged to think in Rube Goldberg terms about some contraptions they design, are also reporting positive influence of this approach on their STEM awareness. These are simple interventions, and much of their effect may be due to the novelty factor; I’ll take that nonetheless!

What it will cost you

“The Incredible Machine” should be abandonware by now. It was available on PCs and Amigas, among other platforms.

Book pairing

David Epstein’s “Range” is a book in praise of going wide, trying out seemingly silly things, and sampling a broad range of experiences. For something else, there’s this poem by Shane Hawley: a hysterical, hilarious glimpse into the mind of the greatest Rube Goldberg machine engineer of all time (NSFW, f-bombs).

Music pairing

Steve Reich if you’re feeling fancy; Raymond Scott Quintette’s “Powerhouse” if you want to stay true to the original energy.

What else to play

“Minecraft” and “Roblox” are the usual suspects in modern times. “Stardew Valley” still works as a recommendation here. And I saw enough crazy stuff go down in “Kerbal Space Program” to include it, too.

This post is part of “100 games, and what they taught me” – a series of short essays about the games I play and the things I learn from them.

(Photo by Pavel Neznanov on Unsplash)