I spent hours and hours as a kid on The Incredible Machine 3, so I went into this de facto remake with pretty rose-tinted glasses. And my final judgement is: its fine? It's hard to know how many of the little nitpicks I had here and there were present in the original and which are features of the new and updated engine. An awful lot of the puzzles are able to be brute-force solved: why bother setting up this motor to trigger some huge series of events to turn off a laser when I can just plop the motor in front of the laser to block it? The game can get pretty janky at times too, but I think that's just an unfortunate truth about all physics puzzles.

The part that bothers me the most is the presentation. It's really quite nightmarish in some places (cf the 3D models for the cat and the dog) and the sound design can be pretty offputting; the zombies in particular need to stfu. And I just wish it wasn't presented in such a deliberately childish way; the puzzles genuinely get pretty insane by the end so, although its definitely friendly, this really wouldnt have to be a kid's game. The music in particular is... well, I've played it on mute since shortly after starting it.

But overall? The puzzles are pretty fun and very diverse, and the game ends up being pretty addictive in a good way. So in the end, a middle of the road score for a middle of the road game.