YMMV / The Incredible Machine

• Awesome Music: The soundtrack overall is amazing.
  • Bonus awesome points if (in the second game) you finish a puzzle just in time for the climax of Also Sprach Zarathustra.
• Fridge Logic: Many devices are excused from this, but lighting a fuse with a flashlight still seems odd.
  • You do have to put the magnifying glass between the flashlight and fuse or candle. And you have to put it in correct direction. Flashlight's power, though...
• Polished Port: The 3DO port of the original game. Not only are the graphics of higher quality, but the game includes speech and a remastered soundtrack that was so well received, some of the tracks were added into the sequels on the PC. The only gripe would be the awkwardness of using the clunky 3DO controller and not a mouse.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Even More Contraptions is harder than Return of the Incredible Machine: Contraptions.
  • All Difficult levels have no hints in the sequel, unlike in the prequel where most have hints.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • "Ragtime" in the third installment is a modified tune of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag".
  • "Hay Seed" from Contraptions has notable similarity to "Against the Grain" by Garth Brooks.
  • TIM2's "Detective" track bears more than a passing resemblance to the Theme From Peter Gunn.
  • TIM2 also has a track called "Huey Dewey", a song in the style of Huey Lewis and the News.
  • "Experimental Jazz" takes some cues from Art of Noise.
• Tear Jerker: The "New Age" track from TIM 2, TIM 3, Return Of, and Even More Contraptions. Can also be a Heartwarming Moment.
• That One Level:
  • In Expert 10, "Sky Skipper" in The Incredible Machine: Even More Contraptions you have to fulfill several goals, one of which is to bonk Mandrill on the head. This has to be the absolute last goal you fulfill, or at least close to that. The game only checks for the Mandrill's current state, so if by the end of your solution he's back in his "sitting" state, you're out of luck - the game will never acknowledge your solution. This has caused many players to consult walkthroughs on this one level, never understanding why their solution refuses to work.
  • ANYTHING that is a billiards puzzle. Especially the Tutorial level "Billiards" where even though you did what Professor Tim instructed, the game does not recognize that you've solved the puzzle.
  • Really Hard Puzzle 11, Lasermania, is a huge pain. You need to make use of the little time you have when the mouse wheel is active to set off a string of lasers that point into laser-powered sockets such that they will loop around and power themselves, while also trying to reach the end goal of turning on a can opener. Not only is the puzzle very confusing, you can end up in a situation where even if everything was set up right, the lasers will be playing hot potato with one another thanks to the fact that there is a slight delay between the laser reaching the socket and the socket turning on. This in turn also means that the can opener never stays powered long enough to actually turn on. In addition, the laser placement is extremely picky, requiring near pixel-levels of accuracy not usually seen elsewhere in the game.
  • Difficult 30, "Store the Basketball" in The Incredible Machine: Even More Contraptions may be appropriately difficult for a Hard level, but it can be very frustrating due to it being broken. Many times, the basketball won't go through the hole in between the ramps above the box, thus preventing you from beating the level when you should have beaten it.

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